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Hocking College opens a Rescue Kitchen to address food accessibility in southeast Ohio

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NELSONVILLE, Ohio (WOUB) — A new regional initiative is underway to make food more accessible in southeast Ohio.

On Nov. 22, Hocking College held a groundbreaking ceremony with its partners to kick off the Rescue Kitchen project, which will be part of the college’s Hospitality and Culinary Center.   

“If there’s something that we can do at Hocking College through our culinary program to make a difference, I want to be able to be a part of that,” said Jarrod Tudor, executive vice president at Hocking College.  

The distillery room at Hocking College which will be used for the Rescue Kitchen project
This 700-square-foot distillery room at Hocking College will be turned into a kitchen for the Rescue Kitchen project. [HG Biggs | WOUB]
The Rescue Kitchen is an initiative to turn surplus foods into meals for those in need in southeast Ohio, starting with turning the 700-square-foot distillery room into a functional kitchen for food production and distribution.

One of the organizations partnering with the college is La Soupe Cincinnati, a nonprofit that takes food that would otherwise be wasted across the supply chain and turns it into meals.  

Katie Funk, inspire and innovation director at La Soupe, said there are different reasons for foods to become surplus, such as the packaging not meeting a brand standard or stores getting rid of foods to make space for new supplies. 

“That doesn’t mean that they’re not healthy and that they’re not great to give to people. But they’re better processed, put into a meal, and then that stuff goes into the freezer, and then somebody can heat it up and eat it whenever they like,” Funk said.  

The Joe Burrow Foundation, another partner on this project, donated $100,000 to the college to help develop the kitchen’s operation.  

Jarrod Tudor and Robin Burrow hugging each other
The Joe Burrow Foundation donated $100,000 to Hocking college for the Rescue Kitchen project. [HG Biggs | WOUB]
Robin Burrow, Joe’s mother, said the foundation started bringing meals from Cincinnati to southeast Ohio to help those experiencing food insecurity. She said this partnership with Hocking College and La Soupe will help expand its reach. 

“It’s, I think, important to think outside of the box and solve problems in a systematic way, not necessarily just putting little Band-Aids on big problems. So we hope that this project will do that,” Burrow said.  

Hocking College officials said the project’s next step is to procure a 400-square-foot walk-in freezer connected to the kitchen.  

In the meantime, the college said it takes food from La Soupe Cincinnati and distributes it to the communities in need in southeast Ohio. 

Hocking College officials said once the kitchen is up and running in the spring, it is looking to take over the full process from food sorting and production to food storage and distribution.  

Working with school districts and food programs to distribute meals, the kitchen will start providing about 65,000 servings of food to the communities.