Michael Casper sticks a label on an aluminum foil lid.

It’s 5:45 p.m. on a Friday night in November. Soon, volunteers will arrive at the restaurant-grade kitchen in a Northeast Portland church basement.

Casper, founder and co-director of the nonprofit Milk Crate Kitchen, is getting a table set up to package meals. The label he’s sticking on lids lists the meal and ingredients that volunteers will portion into family-size servings.

“We’re doing Salisbury steak with roasted potatoes and carrots with a mushroom gravy,” Casper, who used to be an executive chef at a country club, explained.

There’s a vegan option and a meat one, made with donated beef. The carrots came from three different farms. The cooked meal will be delivered to Portlanders in need, no questions asked.

“I always try to say that life’s problems don’t seem so hard when you have a full stomach,” Casper said.

Milk Crate Kitchen uses donated food from Portland-area restaurants and farms to cook up restaurant-quality meals for families. The grassroots nonprofit is working to reduce hunger in the region while minimizing food waste. With a staff of two aided by more than 30 volunteers each week, the group delivers meals to community-based organizations across Portland and prepares 100 meals for families delivered to their door or available for pick-up every other week.

Now a fully fledged 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Milk Crate Kitchen is able to coordinate volunteers, accept tax-deductible donations and partner with businesses and nonprofits.

But it started as a project out of Casper’s own kitchen in 2020.

“When COVID happened, I saw that there was a need in the community,” Casper said. “Grandma always said, ‘If you don’t know what to do, do what you know.’ And I know how to cook. And so I just started cooking and giving it away.”

There are no requirements for families to participate; they can sign up for a time window every other Wednesday. Ingredients are regularly gleaned from farmers markets and restaurants or purchased with donated funds.

It’s a small solution to a big problem. The number of Oregonians experiencing hunger and food insecurity continues to rise – around 400,000 people in the state don’t know where their next meal will come from, according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the latest on record.

Prices at the grocery store are also going up, making access to nourishing, healthy food out of reach for some. Anti-hunger programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, help bolster a household’s grocery budget, but they don’t completely cover the gaps. The recent government shutdown and delay of SNAP benefits highlighted the vulnerability of federal programs.

“So many of the folks that request our service are living at the margins and excluded from food assistance programs,” said Sherielyn Gardner, Milk Crate Kitchen’s co-director. “Twenty-two percent identify as having a physical disability and lack of resources that make going to local food pantries and meal prepping challenging.”

A majority are on fixed and low incomes, she said, and the rising cost of groceries, housing and child care is becoming more unaffordable.

Large organizations and government programs can be well-resourced and have a broad reach. And while nonprofits like Milk Crate Kitchen may be unable to fill the hole left when institutional help falls through, they do offer an opportunity for businesses and organizations to step up. Smaller organizations often have less red tape, are able to mobilize quickly when a crisis hits, and often have strong relationships across the region.

Stepping up in crisis

Gardner joined Casper’s efforts in early 2021 and built Milk Crate Kitchen’s network of partners. Gardner moved from volunteer to part-time employee in February 2023. Casper and Gardner serve as co-directors of Milk Crate Kitchen and are the organization’s sole employees.

Milk Crate Kitchen does not receive government funding, and while Gardner hopes to become part of the Oregon Food Bank network in the future, it currently is not partnered with major food banks. Gardner said the group operates thanks to volunteers and because of the relationships built with businesses, nonprofits and the community.

“Ninety percent of the funds that we get are from individual giving, private donations,” Gardner said. “We also have received grants from smaller organizations, nonprofit organizations, and businesses that will do percent of proceeds, percent of sales, to us. We don’t have any contracts with the city or state.”

Milk Crate Kitchen is an official gleaning partner of the Montavilla and Sellwood Moreland Farmer’s Markets and partners with multiple area farms. The group regularly gets food that might otherwise get tossed out from restaurants like Lardo and Smoking Jay. During an ice storm in January 2024 that temporarily shuttered many of the city’s restaurants, Casper made sandwiches with ingredients rescued from Portland’s famous women’s sports bar, The Sports Bra.

“It’s relationship-based and it’s trust-based,” Gardner said, referring to both the organizations they work with and the families they serve. “Because a lot of the folks that come to us, whether they’re working or not, they have likely been failed by the system at least once.”

Plugging into Portland’s food rescue community

Nikki Clark is among Friday night’s group of five volunteers packing up Salisbury steaks, roasted root vegetables and mushroom gravy for delivery Saturday morning. Clark works in technology, but has previous food service experience. She’s been volunteering with Milk Crate Kitchen about once a month for the last three years.

“It’s really easy to feel super helpless and overwhelmed when something like SNAP is not going out to people,” Clark said. “I know that was really motivating for a lot of people to get involved in distributing food.”

She said Portlanders wanting to help have multiple organizations rescuing and redistributing food to turn to.

“Portland has such a robust community of food rescue, of food distribution, of free fridges, and I think there is a way you can plug in,” Clark said. “You just need to kind of learn the networks first and figure out where you fit.”

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‘No such thing as extra food’

By 7:30 p.m. on Friday night, around 100 meals, which include four servings each, are packed, labeled and ready to go out to families. A bag of pastries and quartered bread loaves from Ken’s Artisan Bakery sits in the middle of the kitchen. Casper encourages volunteers to take some on their way out.

“There’s no such thing as extra food when there’s hungry people,” he says, and not for the first time in the evening.

A lead volunteer washes dishes as the volunteers depart. Casper takes inventory of the three refrigerators, now filled with meals.

“I know we’re not going to be able to feed everybody, right? And it breaks my heart knowing that I can’t produce another 100 meals or 200 meals,” he said. “But each day we come in and we try to do what we can with what we have and make it extend out so that we can have the most impact with the most people.”

And, the group has been able to expand its reach. Milk Crate Kitchen used to deliver 80 meals every two weeks, but as Casper got more familiar with the kitchen space, he’s been able to stretch ingredients and volunteer time so they can make 100 meals.

If he had another oven, a bit more refrigerator space and four more burners, Casper said he could nearly double the organization’s output.

In crisis and in normal times

SNAP benefits have been turned back on, for now. But even when full benefits are loaded, experts have long said SNAP doesn’t cover a full month of groceries.

Casper said there’s an infinite number of reasons people are struggling, whether it’s for a day or a week. A nourishing meal can help provide a little encouragement.

“This isn’t a time to take a break,” Casper said. “This is a time to show up. These things happen, it spotlights the need, but it doesn’t go away when nobody’s looking at it. There are still people there that need it. And so it’s our commitment to our community that we show up and we do what we can.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/11/25/milk-crate-kitchen-portland-oregon-snap-hunger/