Sometimes a kitchen is more than just a kitchen, you know?

That’s why we are absolutely thrilled to announce the opening of our brand new 500-square-foot Family Meals kitchen in Biogen’s Kendall Square headquarters. This fantastic new space was built for us pro-bono by Biogen and their construction partners and offered to us as a dedicated home to our Family Meals program, which will allow us to grow this important hunger-relief initiative and get more good food to people who need it.

At a time when one in 10 people in Massachusetts struggles with hunger, and a recent study shows that over a third of college students don’t always have enough to eat, this is one kitchen that will be doing a lot of good.

Our Family Meals program uses surplus food rescued from university dining halls and corporate and hospital cafeterias and repackages it into appetizing, nutritionally balanced, frozen single-serving meals. We then redistribute these heat-and-eat meals to folks experiencing food insecurity who have limited access to kitchens or face other barriers to cooking for themselves. This includes local community college students, families sheltered in hotels without access to kitchens, recent immigrants, and many others.

Until now, we had been limited in how much we could grow this amazing program. Previously, we had been borrowing space in local church kitchens to house it, and while we are truly grateful for the generosity of these partners, the logistical challenges the venues presented meant that we had limited time in those spaces or struggled to always get enough volunteers to them.  

Biogen, in a meaningful act of corporate citizenship, is now offering us a permanent space for the program, which we can access at any time. We can store our food and equipment, keep it clean, and set it up to our own specifications. Last year, staff and volunteers packaged and distributed roughly 25,000 microwaveable meals through Family Meals. In our new space, we’ll now have the capacity to deliver over 100,000 meals each year, and prevent 64,000 pounds of food waste!

And to top it off, thanks to the amazing work of Life Science Cares, we can be sure our kitchen will never be short on volunteers. Life Science Cares works to address the effects of poverty and inequality in Cambridge and Greater Boston by connecting life science companies to local nonprofits and volunteer opportunities within their communities. Over the past several years, they have been a tremendous supporter of Food For Free, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with them as Family Meals grows into its new space.

We are so excited, and grateful, to be able to expand our Family Meals program, and feed more people struggling with hunger. The success of this program, and of our other initiatives that get healthy food to folks who need it, hinges upon the support of our fantastic community of donors, volunteers, and civic and corporate partners.

Thanks to the incredible commitment of Biogen and Life Science Cares to building stronger and healthier communities, we will be able to meaningfully broaden the reach of our food rescue and hunger relief efforts, and continue to work toward a common vision of eliminating food insecurity in Greater Boston!