Incubating Immigrant Chefs

Preparing delicious homemade food is one skill that many immigrants bring with them in coming to New York. Cooking as they once did at home is not dependent upon English language proficiency nor does it require extensive equipment. Indigenous ingredients are not hard to find in the city’s neighborhoods. It is an activity which can also be scheduled around complex lives. Cooks can be their own bosses. While the work is very hard, it can be a pathway to earning money less dangerous and more steady than driving rideshare or delivering by ebike. Many immigrants start cooking and selling their wares to their compatriots as informal vendors on the street. Many food businesses have grown from food sold out of coolers on the sidewalk to licensed food trucks and even restaurants. 

Philanthropy Leaders is incubating a few immigrant chefs with the goal of accelerating their passage to formal culinary jobs or businesses, while earning a living. Our chef contacts come through relationships with three projects, one of which, The Arepa Project, based in South Brooklyn, established a model upon which we hope to build a scalable enterprise. The additional chefs will initially be drawn from the other two projects, Wanllan Mi Wanlle, (WMW)  a West African mutual aid project, largely serving migrants seeking asylum and an English conversation group for Pakistani and Bengali women in Kensington sponsored by People In Need, a South Asian women’s empowerment and youth development group.

For The Arepa Project, two Venezuelan migrant chefs make arepas during the week, cooking and selling out of a network of host kitchens provided in the homes of Brooklyn allies. Volunteers also created an online ordering system and arranged wholesale sales through the Windsor Terrace Food Coop. Philanthropy Leaders, supported by generous donors, is now strengthening that infrastructure to grow and serve more immigrant chefs. Eventually, the project will spin off on its own.

This is not only an economic empowerment project, but has wonderful "tidal marsh" qualities which bring together, in those host kitchens, middle class Americans and migrants in ways which enrich the lives of both. There are about 18 families in Ditmas Park, Kensington, Windsor Terrace and Park Slope who make their kitchens available for free to the arepas chefs, who come in the morning with their ingredients and pots and pans, cook all day and then have customers, who have ordered through the online system, come to the host house to pick up and pay for their orders. In addition, they sell in bulk to the Windsor Terrace Food Coop once a week. The Coop consistently sells out dozens of arepas. It has worked well for over a year, despite the Venezuelans, who face another year of hearings toward asylum, having had to move from their shelter at Floyd Bennett Field to migrant hotels. 

In the next phase, to bring in the West African and Pakistani chefs and eventually other migrant chefs, Philanthropy Leaders is working with a team of volunteers to expand the online ordering system, get business planning assistance for the chefs, and will provide revolving cash flow loans. 

To support the project, we have committed $10,000 of our unrestricted funds and received a generous family foundation grant of $10,000. Once we have demonstrated our ability to achieve some results, we plan to approach the Brooklyn Community Foundation and other institutional sources.