Donate Food

Thank you for your interest in donating food to DC Central Kitchen!

DCCK staff are available seven days a week to pick up food. We use refrigerated vans, train staff members to be “Serv-Safe” certified food handlers, and can provide containers to donors.

We normally only do pickups in the mornings and early afternoons, and request that donors have at least 50 pounds of surplus food and try to give us advance notice of at least 24 hours. Donors are also welcome to select cooking projects (such as snack-mix and granola-making to benefit our Healthy Returns program) and drives (for certain types of canned goods, toiletries, and other high-need items). See full instructions on how to do these off-site projects here.

All donors are protected from liability by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which the United States Congress passed in 1996. This act has allowed donors across the nation to support an effective effort in fighting hunger. We ask that all donors read our guidelines on foods that we can and cannot accept.

Four ways to donate food to DC Central Kitchen:

• Weekly Regular Pickup 
  This option necessitates that you regularly accumulate enough surplus that each pickup amounts to 50 pounds or more of food. As long as food is properly refrigerated or frozen, surplus can be accumulated over several days in order to justify a pickup.
• Call On The Way
  When we are already in your neighborhood, we can schedule our driver to call and see if your restaurant, store or cafeteria has anything to be picked up.
• Call-In Basis
  You can call us when your restaurant or cafeteria has had a large party, cancelled job, or a freezer goes down. We will dispatch a driver as soon as possible and will make every effort to schedule a pickup on the same day.
• Donor Drop-Off
  You can drop off food to the Kitchen between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekends. Get directions to the Kitchen.

To coordinate a pickup of surplus food or to find out more information on our donation polices, please contact Stephen Kendall at skendall@dccentralkitchen.org or at (202)400-2804.