WCK is first to the frontlines, providing fresh meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises.

Food is essential to life every single day, all over the world—and it is more important than ever in a crisis. Not only is a thoughtful, freshly prepared meal one less thing someone has to worry about in the wake of a disaster, it is a reminder that you are not alone, someone is thinking about you, and someone cares. Food has the power to be the nourishment and hope we need to pick ourselves back up in the darkest times. 

In 2010, Chef José Andrés, ready to use his culinary knowledge and talent to help, headed to Haiti following a devastating earthquake. Cooking alongside displaced families in a camp, he was guided on the proper way to cook black beans the way Haitians like to eat them: mashed and sieved into a creamy sauce. It wasn’t just about feeding people in need—it was about listening, learning, and cooking side by side with the people impacted by the crisis. This is the real meaning of comfort food, and it’s the core value that José, along with his wife Patricia, used at the center of founding World Central Kitchen. 

For seven years after José founded World Central Kitchen, the organization would focus on resilience programs, investing in longer-term solutions around food in the Caribbean and Central America. With roots in Haiti, WCK began a Clean Cooking program to support communities’ transition away from cooking over dangerous open wood- and coal-fueled fires. After several years, José and WCK built and opened École des Chefs, a culinary school in Port-au-Prince under the direction of Mi-Sol Chevallier—one of Haiti’s most respected chefs.

While the organization focused on sustainable programming over the years, José never forgot about those early days cooking in the camp in Haiti. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, and José, with several chefs from his team, decided it was time to act. The group got on the ground and began helping to prepare meals. José continued learning, observing how food relief was handled following a crisis—he immediately saw gaps and ways that it could be done better. Then, just a month later, Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico—the storm brought catastrophic devastation, and millions of Americans were in need, immediately. Boarding the first commercial flight to San Juan, José started in one kitchen, cooking sancocho at a friend’s restaurant in the Santurce neighborhood. Building fast, chefs, food trucks, volunteers joined the team and #ChefsForPuertoRico was born. WCK would go on to serve nearly 4 million fresh meals in the aftermath of María. 

Since preparing the first few hundred meals in Puerto Rico, WCK teams have served meals to people recovering from crisis every single day. Hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis, and volcano eruptions took the team across the world, growing in knowledge and capacity with each crisis. Initially responding to just natural disasters, WCK quickly expanded the definition of disasters to which we respond—providing nourishing meals for refugees arriving at the US border after fleeing violence and extreme poverty, Venezuelan families lacking access to food in their own neighborhoods, heroic hospital staff working nonstop in the uncertainty of a global pandemic, and Ukrainian families living through an unthinkable invasion and the constant threat of attack. All of this work is made possible by working with communities wherever WCK teams go—over and over again, WCK sees the best of humanity show up in the worst of times.

Over the years, José and WCK teams have continued to learn, adapt, and build responses unique to each situation and community. We have, at times, made long-term commitments in food systems following disasters. Our Food Producer Network ran for five years supporting small food producers in Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, Guatemala, and the USVIs. While cooking hot meals with locally sourced ingredients from Field Kitchens has traditionally been our goal and focus in times of crisis, sometimes fresh produce boxes or meal kits for families to cook themselves are a better fit. Partnering with local restaurants looking to help their neighbors allows us to get meals ready immediately. During our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, meals that were cooked, cooled, and could be reheated by families safely at home met the unique need of the time. The WCK approach is that we should always work with urgency, listen to communities, and adapt—all virtues that guide our work. 

World Central Kitchen teams across the world remain deeply committed to serving delicious, chef-prepared meals to people with the dignity they deserve. As the climate-crisis worsens and disasters become not only larger, but more frequent, we’ll continue to be there—and we hope you’ll join us. As José likes to say, “everyone is a part of World Central Kitchen, they may just not know it yet!”.