Become a Meal Partner
Is there a way food could support the work of your organization or community group? Consider becoming a meal partner! Our Community Meals Program supports a variety of mission-aligned partners to better support people facing barriers to accessing nutritious foods in our community, including after school programs, ESL classes, emergency shelters and more. By offering quality food support on a sliding scale basis to other nonprofits and community groups, this food helps create opportunities for our partners to focus energy and resources on their unique missions.
We have two kitchens in the Nations neighborhood of West Nashville, where we use garden-grown, donated, and purchased ingredients to prepare and cook nutritious scratch-made meals, prioritizing what is in season as much as possible. These meals are significantly supported by our food recovery efforts, through which we collect excess produce and other perishable foods from local farms, grocers, and restaurants.
Meal Partnership INQUIRIES
Thank you for your interest in becoming a community meal partner organization! Our inquiry form for fall meals partners is not yet open. To learn more or ask questions about The Nashville Food Project’s Community Meals program, please contact our Director of Food Access at tera@thenashvillefoodproject.org.
About Our Meals
Our focus is family-style, hot meals designed to serve a crowd. Family-style meals can either be delivered cold to reheat in an oven or hot, ready-to-serve. We also provide cold, ready-to-eat meals and individually packaged microwaveable meal options on a more limited basis.
Click here to learn more about our meals and service options!
Eligibility
To be eligible for a meal partnership, we require that groups:
Meet in the greater Nashville area
Reach people facing economic, health, cultural or social barriers to accessing nutritious food
Support a regularly scheduled, ongoing gathering or program that helps reduce some of those barriers
Treat everyone with dignity and respect; must not discriminate or require specific actions for people to receive food
Have an average attendance/service of at least 20 people
Prioritize decreasing food waste
Designate a consistent person to facilitate meal service and provide feedback
Have clean dry storage and adequate refrigeration if receiving food at your location
Provide reliable access to the facility or have a person available to receive all food deliveries
Sliding Scale Pricing
Our Community Meals program operates as a social enterprise, helping us to earn revenue and further expand food access to people experiencing food insecurity in our city.
The Food Project subsidizes the costs of all partner meals through our fundraising efforts. Partner meal subsidies range from 15% to 95% subsidized, but we also offer “free” meals in certain cases. We work with each partner to determine their capacity to pay for our meals. We consider a number of factors, including but not limited to organizational or program budget, federal reimbursement eligibility, dedicated grant funding, etc. All suggested meal pricing is based on a portion of our true costs.