The Nashville Food Project’s Blog
What Happens Along the Way
The work is easy to name. What grows around it is harder to measure.
There are the things volunteers come to do: chop onions, sort donations, transport meals, pull weeds, load trucks. Then there are the things that happen while they are doing them.
In 2013, Tallu wrote about a volunteer who had become her friend. He traveled to the kitchen by bus each week, arrived on time, called if he was running late, and remembered staff birthdays. He treated his commitment to the work with great care.
When a Social Security employee questioned whether he could manage his own finances, Tallu described the person she knew: reliable, communicative, generous. The employee removed the requirement that someone else manage his benefits.
Her friend left beaming. Tallu reminded him that she had not changed the outcome. She had simply been there long enough to witness what he had already accomplished.
Years later, Jacob and Abhinav met during a Tuesday-night kitchen shift. Abhinav arrived and decided the knives needed sharpening. Jacob made fun of him. By the end of the evening, they had decided to become friends.
They eventually became roommates and Tuesday-night regulars. Between dull knives, endless potatoes, and the last dishes of the evening, a volunteer shift became a weekly ritual.
The circumstances are different, but both stories reveal something true about this work.
People come to be useful. They return because someone remembers their name. Slowly, almost unnoticed, strangers become regulars. Regulars become friends. Someone sees what another person carries and reflects it back to them.
Over 15 years, thousands of volunteers have helped grow food, prepare meals, and keep the work moving. Along the way, they have found purpose, humor, trust, and one another.
The onions get chopped. The meals get packed. The dishes eventually get washed.
And then there is everything else.
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Hamilton
Staff Spotlight: Creating Connection Around the Table
For Hamilton, food is an invitation to care for one another and build relationships that last beyond the meal.
A table can serve many purposes.
It can hold a meal prepared for a celebration, bring colleagues together at the end of a long day, or offer friends and neighbors a place to sit beside one another. Whatever the occasion, gathering around food creates an opportunity to slow down, share something meaningful, and feel connected.
That belief is central to how Hamilton approaches his new role as Catering Manager at The Nashville Food Project.
“I believe the table is one of the most powerful places where we demonstrate care and create relationships,” Hamilton shared. “I want my work to reflect that.”
Through our catering program, Hamilton will help create meals and experiences rooted in hospitality. His work will include the many practical details required to bring people together around food, but he also sees what those details make possible: a space where guests feel welcomed and relationships can begin or deepen.
Hospitality often takes shape through small choices. It can be found in a thoughtfully prepared meal, a table set with intention, or the care taken to make sure each guest feels considered. These choices may be easy to overlook once an event begins, but together they help create the atmosphere people carry with them when they leave.
For Hamilton, this work is also personal because Nashville is home.
“Nashville is my home, and contributing to a more just and nourishing food system here is meaningful work I can grow into for years to come,” he said.
The Nashville Food Project’s catering program offers a distinct way to support that vision. Each catering order helps sustain our work of bringing people together to grow, cook, and share nourishing food. A meal prepared for one gathering becomes connected to a broader effort to cultivate community and alleviate hunger across Nashville.
That connection reflects what we have long believed about food: its meaning is rarely limited to what is on the plate. Food can welcome someone into a room. It can express thoughtfulness without requiring many words. It can turn an ordinary meeting into a shared experience and remind us that care is something we practice.
As Catering Manager, Hamilton will help carry that spirit into the gatherings our team serves. His role sits at the meeting point of food, hospitality, and relationship, three things that have always been closely connected in our work.
We are grateful to welcome Hamilton to The Nashville Food Project and to have his care and perspective shaping this next chapter of our catering program.
Every table offers a chance to create connection. We look forward to seeing what Hamilton helps make possible around ours.
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Karissa
For Karissa, hope is found in the many people and offerings that become part of one shared story.
A meal rarely begins in the kitchen. It may begin with a farmer gathering the morning’s harvest, a business setting aside ingredients that can still be used, or a volunteer choosing to spend a few hours chopping vegetables beside someone they have just met. It may also begin with a community partner who understands where food is needed and how best to share it.
By the time everyone gathers around the table, many people have already had a hand in what is being served.
As Senior Director of Food Access at The Nashville Food Project, Karissa sees those connections every day. Her work is shaped by a belief that food can do more than nourish the body. It can create the conditions for people to recognize and care for one another.
“What gives me hope is that food has a unique ability to bring people together across differences,” Karissa shared, “not only to share nourishment, but to feel seen, known, and connected.”
Food has always carried this possibility. A table asks people to pause. It gives them a reason to sit beside one another. Conversation may begin with what is on the plate, but it rarely ends there.
For Karissa, the work of food access is not only about moving food from one place to another. It is about the relationships that make that movement possible and the dignity with which food is grown, prepared, and shared.
“A farmer’s harvest, a recovered ingredient, a volunteer’s time, and a community partner’s work can all become part of one shared story,” she said.
Each contribution may seem small when viewed on its own. Together, they form a food system rooted in cooperation rather than isolation. Growers bring knowledge of the land. Cooks transform ingredients into meals. Volunteers offer their hands and time. Community partners bring trusted relationships with neighbors. No single person or organization carries the work alone.
“A thriving community is built when growers, cooks, volunteers, partners, and neighbors bring what they have to the table and rise together,” Karissa reflected.
That collective effort is what gives her hope. It can meet an immediate need while also creating something more lasting: stronger relationships, greater access, and a food system shaped by the people who live within it.
For The Nashville Food Project, this means looking beyond the meal itself. Nourishing food matters deeply, but so does how it reaches someone, who had a voice in the process, and what becomes possible when people work together.
As Karissa shared, this work “can do more than meet a fundamental need. It can catalyze individual and community transformation while building a more sustainable and accessible food system across Nashville.”
Hope, in this sense, is not abstract. It is visible in the harvest, the recovered ingredient, the hours spent preparing a meal, and the partner who welcomes a neighbor to the table. It is built through many people bringing what they have and trusting that, together, it can become enough.
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Jacob & Abhinav
Community Story: More Than a Tuesday Night
As Jacob and Abhinav prepare to leave Nashville, they reflect on the friendship and sense of purpose they found in our kitchen.
On Tuesday evenings, volunteers arrive at The Nashville Food Project from work, put on aprons and gloves, and take their places around the cutting boards. There are onions to chop, meals to portion, and dishes that will continue accumulating until someone finally shuts down the dish pit.
For Jacob and Abhinav, this became a weekly ritual.
Their friendship began during Abhinav’s first shift. Newly arrived in Nashville and looking for people who shared his interests in food, agriculture, and community, he entered the kitchen and decided that the knives needed sharpening.
Standing across from him was Jacob Kim, who found this funny.
“He made fun of me the entire night,” Abhinav recalled. “That night, we decided we should be friends.”
They eventually became roommates. They also became Tuesday-night regulars, inviting friends to volunteer and building relationships with the people who worked beside them.
The structure of a kitchen shift encourages this. Two hours spent peeling fruit or chopping what appears to be an inexhaustible supply of potatoes leaves plenty of room for conversation. Small talk eventually runs out. Something more familiar takes its place.
“I think it’s reinforcing,” Abhinav said. “People come, and then we become friends with them, and then we invite others to join us.”
Jacob arrived at The Nashville Food Project by a different route. Before working in corporate sales, he had been a paramedic, a job in which the value of helping someone was immediate and clear. A mentor suggested volunteering as a way to reconnect with that sense of purpose.
“I came here, and I was like, ‘This actually works for me,’” Jacob said. “This is what I want to be doing.”
Food was a natural place for both of them to find connection. In Jacob’s Korean family, affection was often expressed through a question: “Have you eaten yet?” An apology might arrive as a plate of fruit. Abhinav recognized the same language in his Indian family, where a guest would seldom be allowed to leave without eating something.
“It is the heart and soul of how people come together,” Abhinav said.
That belief gave the work added meaning. Abhinav was especially drawn to watching recovered ingredients, food that might otherwise have been discarded, become something nourishing and thoughtfully prepared.
“What’s really special is seeing all of that food being given another life,” he said.
With each shift, Jacob and Abhinav learned more of the kitchen’s private geography: how to operate the equipment, where everything belonged, and how to close the dish pit before the evening grew too late. Eventually, they became the people showing new volunteers where to stand and what to do next.
There was satisfaction in this progression from visitor to regular, from uncertain beginner to trusted guide. There was also plenty of friendly competition, spirited debate about the fastest way to cut a mango, and pizza shared after the work was finished.
Now Jacob and Abhinav are leaving Nashville for new cities, where both hope to find places to volunteer again. They will carry with them what Tuesday evenings taught them: that useful work can steady the mind, that food can say what words do not, and that friendship may begin with something as ordinary as a dull kitchen knife.
We are grateful for the humor, curiosity, and care they brought to our kitchen. Their Tuesday-night routine is ending, but the community they helped create remains.
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Latosha
Staff Spotlight: The Care Behind Every Meal
For Latosha, meaningful work begins with knowing that children are enjoying the food she helped prepare.
Long before a meal reaches a table, there is work to be done.
Ingredients must be prepared. Portions must be counted. Containers must be organized and packed. Every detail matters when nourishing food is being prepared for children and families across Nashville.
At The Nashville Food Project’s kitchen based at St. Luke’s Community House, Latosha helps hold those details together.
As Meals Coordinator, she supports the daily work of preparing, organizing, and sharing meals with care. It is practical, hands-on work, but its meaning reaches far beyond the kitchen.
“Just knowing the kids are enjoying the food makes the work meaningful,” Latosha shared.
Her words offer a simple reminder of why each step matters. Behind every meal is a child sitting down to eat. There are children discovering a new favorite dish, talking with friends over lunch, or finding the energy they need for the rest of the day.
Latosha may not always be present for those moments, but she helps make them possible.
Much of the work inside a community kitchen happens quietly. It can be found in the steady rhythm of preparing ingredients, checking quantities, arranging meals, and making sure food is ready to go where it is needed. These tasks may appear ordinary on their own, but together they become an act of care repeated across hundreds of meals.
That care is part of the shared effort behind everything we do. Our team brings people together to grow, cook, and share nourishing food with the goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in Nashville. Each person contributes something essential, from the growers who tend the land to the volunteers who prepare ingredients, the kitchen staff who turn those ingredients into meals, and the community partners who welcome neighbors around the table.
Latosha’s work is one part of that larger circle.
At St. Luke’s Community House, the kitchen is more than a place where food is prepared. It is where planning becomes nourishment and where many individual tasks come together around a common purpose. The meals that leave the kitchen carry the attention of everyone who helped prepare them.
For Latosha, the clearest measure of that work is not found in a production count or a completed checklist. It is knowing that a child received a meal and enjoyed it.
There is something deeply human in that measure. Food should do more than meet a need. It should offer comfort, familiarity, and pleasure. It should invite someone to eat, not simply provide something to eat.
We are grateful for Latosha and for the care she brings to this work each day. Through her role, nourishing food is prepared thoughtfully, organized carefully, and shared with the children and families at the heart of our mission.
Sometimes the meaning of a meal is as simple as knowing that a child enjoyed it. And sometimes that is enough to make every careful step behind it worthwhile.
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Julia
Staff Spotlight: Choosing Abundance, Building Community
For Julia, community is something you can feel the moment you walk through the kitchen doors at The Nashville Food Project.
It is the volunteer carefully chopping vegetables beside someone they just met. The farmer arriving with freshly harvested produce. The partner organization picking up meals to share with neighbors across the city. The regular rhythm of people coming together, each carrying a different story, skill, or offering.
“Community in my role looks like never knowing who is going to walk through our doors on a daily basis,” Julia shared. “The patchwork of people I come into contact with doing this work is vast, and that diversity is beautiful.”
As Director of Culinary Operations, Julia helps oversee the preparation and sharing of thousands of nourishing meals each week. But for her, the work has always been about more than food alone. It is about the relationships built around it.
Over time, she has watched the culture inside the kitchen ripple outward into the broader community.
“The community we have cultivated internally through our kitchen team and regular volunteers projects impact outward,” she said, “to the people and places where collaborative care is needed most.”
That idea of collaborative care has deeply shaped the way Julia sees both food and community. Through the daily work of preparing meals, recovering ingredients, and creating pathways for access, she has come to believe even more strongly in the power of collective action.
“Cultivating community around creative ways to increase access to food across the city has shown me how many small actions add up to create change,” she reflected.
Working inside our kitchens has also challenged the scarcity mindset that so often shapes conversations around food and resources.
“The knowledge that there is enough to go around is such a strong motivator in everything I do,” Julia said. “I know there is enough because I see how much food comes through our doors every day.”
For Julia, witnessing that abundance firsthand has transformed the way she moves through the world. Instead of focusing on limitation, she sees possibility. Instead of competition, she sees care.
Grounding her in that work is the memory of our founder Tallu Quinn, whose vision and advocacy continue to shape the organization years later.
“The memory of our founder Tallu, and the fierce advocate she was for the work we do, keeps me grounded in moving this mission forward,” Julia said.
That legacy lives on not only in the meals shared each day, but also in the community that continues to gather around the table: volunteers, staff, farmers, partners, and neighbors choosing, together, to care for one another.
In Julia’s eyes, community is not something abstract. It is built day by day through shared labor, shared meals, and the belief that there is enough when we work together.
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Avery & Cora
Internship Spotlight
This summer, two new interns will spend their days learning how stories, relationships, and community support sustain The Nashville Food Project's work across Nashville.
As members of our Development Team, Avery and Cora will experience a side of nonprofit work that often happens behind the scenes. While meals may be the most visible expression of our mission, every meal shared begins with something deeper: people. People who volunteer their time. People who invest in the work. People who believe that food can bring communities together.
For Avery, that learning begins with storytelling.
"I'm looking forward to developing my storytelling skills by helping share the stories behind The Nashville Food Project's 15 years of service and impact."
As The Nashville Food Project approaches its fifteenth anniversary this September, Avery will help capture and share stories that reflect the heart of our work. Some of those stories live in the kitchen, where meals are prepared each day. Others begin in community gardens, partner organizations, volunteer shifts, and neighborhood gathering spaces. Together, they tell the story of a city that continues to show up for one another through food.
Storytelling has always been an important part of our mission. Every meal shared, every volunteer welcomed, and every partnership formed is rooted in human connection. Through her work this summer, Avery will help elevate the voices of the people who make our work possible and the neighbors whose lives are touched by it.
For Cora, the summer offers a different perspective on how change happens.
"I am excited to learn more about The Nashville Food Project's mission and impact in the Nashville community by assisting the Development team. This internship will not only challenge me but also help me grow in my communication and research skills."
Working alongside our Development Team, Cora will help strengthen the relationships that sustain our mission. She will learn how philanthropy, community engagement, and donor stewardship work together to support The Nashville Food Project's ability to grow, cook, and share nourishing food across Nashville.
While many people encounter our work through a meal, a farmers market, or a volunteer shift, there is an entire network of supporters behind those experiences. Their generosity helps ensure that nourishing food reaches neighbors across the city while supporting a stronger and more connected local food system. Through her internship, Cora will gain a firsthand understanding of how those relationships are cultivated and sustained over time.
One of the most valuable parts of serving on our Development Team is seeing how interconnected every aspect of The Nashville Food Project truly is. The generosity of donors helps expand our reach. Volunteers transform ingredients into meals. Community partners help ensure those meals reach the people who need them most. No part of the work stands alone.
As Avery and Cora begin their summer with us, we are grateful for the curiosity, creativity, and enthusiasm they bring to our team. We are equally excited for what they will learn about the power of food, community, and collective action.
At The Nashville Food Project, we believe that cultivating a more nourished Nashville requires people at every stage of their journey. Investing in emerging leaders is one way we continue building toward that future.
Please join us in welcoming Avery and Cora to The Nashville Food Project. We look forward to learning alongside them and seeing the impact they will make in the months ahead.
Lexie
When Lexie first learned about The Nashville Food Project, it was through a class project researching nonprofits in Nashville. What began as academic research quickly became something more personal.
“The mission really resonated with me,” Lexie shared.
A few years later, that connection led her to complete an internship with us during the fall semester of her senior year. What she expected to be a meaningful learning experience became something much deeper: a community rooted in care, hospitality, and shared purpose.
“I had the best internship experience and loved the people here,” she said. “So I continued volunteering after my internship finished.”
Today, Lexie serves as a volunteer driver, helping deliver nourishing meals to community partners across Nashville. Through each route, delivery, and conversation, she has witnessed the way food creates connection not only between neighbors, but also among the people working together to share it.
“Every connection I made was created thanks to food,” Lexie reflected. “We all see the value of food in nourishing our bodies and bringing people together.”
For Lexie, volunteering became about more than delivering meals. It became about being part of a network of care that stretches across the city.
As she spent more time with staff, volunteers, and community partners, she found herself drawn to the shared values at the center of the work: dignity, compassion, and a belief that everyone deserves access to nourishing food.
“I think the connections I formed here have felt so uniquely deep and rewarding because of those shared values,” she said.
Driving routes throughout Nashville also gave Lexie the opportunity to witness firsthand the impact of consistent, caring relationships. The gratitude and kindness she encountered from community partners and neighbors receiving meals stayed with her long after each delivery ended.
“The kindness and appreciation from those receiving our deliveries make the healing power of food really clear,” she shared. “Getting to interact with so many nice people throughout the Nashville community kept me coming back.”
At The Nashville Food Project, food is never just food. It is a way of showing up for one another. A way of building trust, community, and belonging over time.
Lexie’s story is a reminder that sometimes the smallest acts, loading meals into a car, making a delivery, sharing a moment of conversation, can become part of something much larger: a city where people care for one another through food.
And often, those connections begin with simply showing up at the table together.
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Logan
Staff Spotlight: Food as a Language of Care
Before Logan joined The Nashville Food Project, she knew she was searching for more than just a job. After studying Agroecology at University of California, Santa Cruz and moving across the country, she wanted her work to feel grounded in purpose, surrounded by people who believed in building a more caring and connected world.
“When I came across The Nashville Food Project, I was drawn to the mission immediately,” Logan shared. “Food, justice, dignity — those are all things that deeply matter to me.”
She applied for multiple roles over the course of a year and a half before finally landing on the Share team. Today, as our Produce Access Manager, Logan helps expand Produce Rx, a food-is-medicine initiative that connects patients experiencing food insecurity and diet-related chronic conditions with access to nourishing food through healthcare partnerships.
For Logan, the work is deeply personal because food has always been tied to love.
Some of her earliest memories center around her childhood kitchen, watching her mom move effortlessly between the stove, cutting board, and crowded holiday tables, creating meals that made everyone feel welcome. Logan remembers helping prep vegetables, stirring pots on the stove, and proudly serving as the designated taste tester. In the summers, her family harvested basil from their backyard garden by the bundle, turning it into homemade pesto that she still says is the best she has ever had.
But what stayed with her most was not just the food itself. It was the feeling her mother created around it.
Their home became a gathering place, especially during the holidays. Friends, neighbors, and anyone without a place to go always had a seat at the table. Through those moments, Logan learned that food could be more than nourishment. It could be comfort. Hospitality. Care. A reminder that someone belongs.
“I think people can taste the love in food,” she reflected.
That understanding continues to shape the way Logan approaches her role at The Nashville Food Project. During her first year, care looked like delivering meals to partner organizations across Nashville. Today, it also looks like helping expand access through Produce Rx and supporting neighbors navigating both health challenges and food insecurity.
“Food can be an act of caring, and it can also make people feel cared for,” she said. “When someone feels cared for, dignity is sparked.”
Outside of work, Logan still finds herself returning to the kitchen. Cooking remains one of the places where she feels most grounded and most herself. She also loves spending time near the water, traveling, watching movies at The Belcourt Theatre, listening to live music in small spaces, and spending time with her dog.
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Mandy
Sometimes the path into community begins with a question. Sometimes it begins with research. And sometimes, if you follow that question far enough, it leads you somewhere you did not expect to stay.
For Mandy, that path led her to The Nashville Food Project.
Mandy first came into relationship with The Nashville Food Project through her PhD fieldwork at Vanderbilt University, where she studies immigration, racialization, and community resistance in Nashville. As she followed those threads, they began to converge.
“All paths quickly took me towards The Nashville Food Project,” she shared.
What began as research became relationship. She started working alongside the Grow Team and farmers at Growing Together Farm and has remained rooted in that work ever since.
Mandy’s research is grounded in the spaces where food is grown and shared. Her work, conducted in partnership with The Nashville Food Project, centers on the lived experiences of farmers and the ways community takes shape through shared land and labor. She studies not only what is grown, but what is made possible through growing.
Across community gardens and farms, people from many different backgrounds come together, bringing knowledge, memory, and tradition with them. In these shared spaces, something shifts. Farmers are not only cultivating food. They are actively remaking their worlds. Their work reflects the layered histories of Nashville’s land and the possibilities of what it can become.
Ask Mandy about food, and she will likely bring up kohlrabi. It has become emblematic of many things in her work, from community ties through root vegetables to transnational growing traditions and evolving foodways. Through her research, she has come to understand that food is always changing, shaped by the people who grow it and the communities that sustain it.
Stepping outside of what feels familiar opens up a fuller picture of the city. It reveals a Nashville that is not singular or fixed, but diverse, dynamic, and continually emerging.
“Food is dignity,” Mandy says.
Her path into food justice began in schools, working with Latinx students and supporting food pantries. There, she encountered a reality that reshaped her understanding of food insecurity. It was not only about access to calories. It was about access to foods that nourish in every sense, including culture, identity, and belonging.
She remembers sorting through pantry items and discarding expired food that did not always reflect what people wanted or needed. In those moments, it became clear that nourishment is about more than availability. It is about dignity.
At the heart of Mandy’s work is a belief that feels both grounded and hopeful. Communities know how to feed themselves. The challenge is access.
Access to land.
Access to resources.
Access to culturally affirming foods.
This is where the work of growing, cooking, and sharing food becomes something more. It becomes about transformation and about building food futures shaped by the people most connected to them.
At The Nashville Food Project, we see this every day in the gardens and growing spaces where knowledge is shared across languages, generations, and experiences.
Last season at the Growing Together Farmers’ Market, Mandy spent time encouraging kids to carve kohlrabi instead of pumpkins. It was a small moment, but it carried something meaningful. An invitation to try something new and to see differently.
Mandy’s story reminds us that food is never just about what is on the plate. It is about who has access, whose knowledge is valued, and whose traditions are sustained.
When communities have what they need, they do not just grow food. They grow connection, resilience, and possibility.
And in that, we begin to see what a more just and nourishing food system can look like.
Brennan
Sometimes the path into community begins with a simple question: where can I show up?
For Brennan, that question led him to The Nashville Food Project. He was looking for something real. Something grounded. Something that mattered. And what he found was a garden.
Brennan came to this work with a belief that feels both simple and urgent: there is enough food, and everyone should have their share. That conviction led him to volunteer at the Community Farm at Mill Ridge, where he stepped into the work outdoors, in the dirt, among the growing things.
Looking back, that choice also brought him closer to memory. His mother loved gardening. Not always the work of it, but the knowing of it. The life within it. In some way, returning to the garden became a quiet way of returning to her.
At The Nashville Food Project, Brennan supports garden construction and planning, helping shape the spaces where food can grow. It is work that often happens behind the scenes, but makes everything else possible. Beds that hold seeds. Structures that support growth. Spaces that make gathering possible. Not everything happens at the table. Some of it happens before the table even exists.
Food has long been part of Brennan’s story. From watching cooking shows as a kid to working in food service to help pay for college, he learned early that food is more than sustenance. It is a way of showing up. “If I did the cooking, I could help carry the load at home,” he shared. Along the way, he noticed something simple but lasting: people want to share what they know. Recipes, techniques, stories. Food becomes a language we can all speak.
“Sharing a recipe or the experience of dining together creates a bond.”
In a world that often emphasizes difference, food reveals common ground. We gather, we eat, we share, and in those moments, connection takes root.
Each Christmas, Brennan and his family begin curing a country ham, a tradition passed down from his mother-in-law. What starts in winter is shared in summer. “It means a lot to her,” he says. “It’s a unique experience for me.” In this way, food becomes more than a meal. It becomes memory, relationship, and care carried forward.
Brennan puts it simply: food is even better when it’s shared.
That belief sits at the heart of our work. Our goal is not just to grow food or cook it, but to create the conditions where sharing is possible, where community can take shape.
There are many ways into this work. In the garden. In the kitchen. In the spaces that support both. All of it matters.
Because what we are building is not just a food system. It is a community shaped by care. And there is always room for one more at the table.
Barb & Mary D.
Together, their rhythm has been simple and steady. One experimenting. One anchoring. Both caring deeply about the meals that leave the kitchen.
March is National Nutrition Month, a time to reflect on the power of food to strengthen both health and community. At The Nashville Food Project, that power often shows up in simple, steady ways. In the hands that chop vegetables. In the meals shared across the city. And in the friendships that grow around a prep table.
Barb Hoffmann and Mary Dionne first met at The Nashville Food Project not long after volunteers returned to the kitchen following the COVID lockdown.
Barb was helping with prep. Mary was cooking. Somewhere between chopping vegetables and passing pans across the counter, they found themselves drawn into easy conversation and shared laughter. What began as small talk at a prep table quickly grew into something deeper.
Their friendship was sealed on an ordinary afternoon when Barb drove Mary D to an eye appointment. Outside the rhythm of the kitchen, they realized just how much they had in common. Kindred spirits, it turned out, are not always found through grand moments. Sometimes they meet over a cutting board.
Soon after, an opening appeared on Mary D’s cook team. She knew immediately who belonged there.
Since then, Barb and Mary D have spent Wednesday mornings side by side in the kitchen. Cooking, prepping, and bringing a little extra joy to the work of preparing meals for the community.
Salads have become their shared canvas. Mary D delights in creating dressings from whatever fresh ingredients she finds in the cooler. Barb prefers the quiet reliability of a recipe, happily chopping, dicing, and keeping their station moving while Mary experiments with flavor.
Together, their rhythm has been simple and steady. One experimenting. One anchoring. Both caring deeply about the meals that leave the kitchen.
Though Barb has recently moved away, her presence continues to echo through the space she helped shape. In every bowl of greens tossed with care, in every moment of laughter shared across a prep table, the impact of that friendship remains.
Barb and Mary D remind us that nutrition is not only about what we eat. It is also about the community that prepares it, the care that goes into each meal, and the relationships that grow along the way.
Thank you, Barb and Mary D.
Bridget
Through farming, she has been able to grow and share produce in ways that connect her more deeply to community. Food has opened doors. It has introduced her to people she might never have met otherwise. It has created opportunities to teach others about the importance of caring for the Earth with intention and respect.
Bridget Bryant’s connection to The Nashville Food Project began at her son’s school.
The Nashville Food Project was there, inviting families to sign up for garden plots. Bridget added her name to the list. What began as a simple step into a shared garden space became something much deeper.
That relationship grew into a partnership. And that partnership helped her expand her work as a farmer.
For Bridget, growing food is not just a business. It is alignment. It is calling. It is the work she was meant to do.
Through farming, she has been able to grow and share produce in ways that connect her more deeply to community. Food has opened doors. It has introduced her to people she might never have met otherwise. It has created opportunities to teach others about the importance of caring for the Earth with intention and respect.
Working with the soil, tending crops, harvesting what has been nurtured over time, she sees clearly that food is a bridge. It bonds people across difference. Regardless of background, belief, or circumstance, everyone shares one thing in common: we all eat.
That shared need creates shared ground.
Bridget carries her family with her in this work. Her grandparents, Ollie Hardaway, Mary Hardaway, Early and Frankie Bryant. Her parents, Eddie and Glenda Bryant. Her best friend, Lisa Hinton. Her brother, Edward Bryant. Their legacy of resilience and care lives in the way she shows up to her farm and her community.
She believes in representing herself fully through her work. The way she grows. The way she shares. The way she teaches. It is all an extension of who she is.
For Bridget, working with the Earth is not simply an occupation. It is vocation.
And through that calling, she is helping cultivate a community where food connects us, grounds us, and reminds us that we belong to one another.
Bianca
Food, for Bianca, has always been a connector. A way to show care. A way to build community. A way to express love when words fall short. Her life has been shaped by faith, purpose, and a deep belief that what we make with our hands can change what happens in the world.
Staff Spotlight
Almost eight years ago, Bianca Morton was searching for work that felt purposeful.
As a chef, she had always loved food. But love alone was not enough. She was looking for mission. For meaning. For a place where food could be more than craft.
At The Nashville Food Project, she found it.
Food, for Bianca, has always been a connector. A way to show care. A way to build community. A way to express love when words fall short. Her life has been shaped by faith, purpose, and a deep belief that what we make with our hands can change what happens in the world.
She often speaks of “each one, teach one.” It is not simply a phrase. It is a way of living.
As a young person, Bianca was not exposed to the kinds of dishes she now curates and stewards. But she was formed by something more foundational: the act of breaking bread. Around her family’s table, she learned that food was not performance. It was presence. It was culture made visible. It was love made tangible.
Through her work, Bianca has built relationships with a network of neighbors she never imagined possible. She has supported individuals navigating barriers and helped create pathways into culinary skills through internships, volunteer experiences, food demonstrations, and hands-on training. Representation matters, she says. And in the kitchen, that representation becomes empowerment.
Food is not only nourishment. It is access. It is skill-building. It is dignity.
Bianca also shares openly about her own journey. Diagnosed with clinical depression in high school, she turned to food as a way to manage her emotions. At the time, she did not yet understand what that instinct meant. Now she sees it clearly. Food was not simply escape. It was medicine. It was a catalyst for healing and a pathway toward a healthier life.
That understanding shapes how she leads today.
Whether stewarding large-scale meal production or mentoring someone in their first culinary experience, Bianca approaches the kitchen as a space of care. A space where skill and compassion meet. A space where legacy is formed.
She speaks often of her grandfather. Of yeast rolls rising in the kitchen. Of recipes passed down not only as ingredients and measurements, but as memory and mission. She sees echoes of that same spirit in the founding vision of Tallu Schuyler Quinn: that food, shared with intention, can knit a community together.
For Bianca, this work is about the legacy of tomorrow.
It is about ensuring that the next generation experiences not only access to good food, but the power that comes from learning to prepare it, share it, and steward it well. It is about cultivating kitchens that do more than produce meals. They produce confidence. Connection. Care.
In every tray prepared, every intern mentored, every volunteer guided, Bianca is doing what she has always done.
She is breaking bread.
And in doing so, she is building a community where food is not simply eaten. It is shared as an expression of hope.