Working Food Helping Get Meals to Those Who Need it Most in North Central Florida

Working food has always put feeding the community at the top of their priorities, but now they are tackling a new challenge.

"We're partnering with some of our entrepreneurs that have been incubating in the kitchen and a local business with bert gill of mildred's and blue gill to prepare food for those in need", says Anna Prizzia, co-founder of Working Food.

Prizzia says the primary goal of the project is to feed the hungry, but it also helps the food business in north central florida.

She says, "The idea is we keep people working, we keep people employed, we buy from our local farmers. We keep them growing and we prepare meals for those that cannot afford them."

Working food has paired with multiple organizations to make this happen, but they also reached out to a few local chefs to prepare the meals. They hope by giving those less fortunate food, it will keep them from getting in trouble.

Carl Watts, a local chef who is preparing the meals, says "If we're going to give free food out to you, you don't have to steal. You don't have to rob. You don't have to do any of those things. We are going to work with you. We're going to make sure you guys have food each week. We're going to make sure our families are fed and do our best to keep employing and that's why I completely supported this initiative because it had all those components that we need to continue to keep our community growing."

So whats on the menu?

Joshua Joseph, another local chef involved in the project, says "We're actually going to be preparing some lemon roasted baked chicken with some smashed sweet potatoes and kale and roasted carrots so we're going to be preparing that for our first week of preparation meals and then every week the menu is going to switch too so next week will be a completely different item on the menu that will be served to the community."

The first delivery was to made to local families Tuesday afternoon.

Working food has received help in funding from the City of Gainesville, the University of Florida, and other private donors to launch this first step of the pilot program.