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Cassandria Campbell, MCP ’11, traces her curiosity in meals to her first summer time job working with the Meals Mission on farms in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and Roxbury, the Boston neighborhood the place she grew up. “I actually loved that have of seeing issues develop,” she recollects, “and I appreciated how a lot change it was creating in Roxbury by bringing individuals collectively and turning vacant heaps into productive city farms.” It wasn’t till she moved again to Roxbury after graduate college that she determined to dive into the meals trade full time by founding Recent Meals Era—an organization striving to make wholesome meals choices extra accessible.
It was whereas incomes her grasp’s diploma in city planning improvement at MIT that Campbell was launched to the rising motion of wholesome, fast-casual meals choices. Her second of readability got here one night time as she was leaving the Roxbury YMCA and realized that the one dinner locations close by had been “unhealthy” quick meals eating places, not like these close to MIT. “It simply hit me. Quick meals shouldn’t be your solely possibility,” she says. “Individuals are having lower-quality life experiences due to meals choices.”
To deal with the issue, she had the thought for an organization that serves wholesome, fast-casual, Caribbean-inspired meals constructed from regionally sourced elements. Recent Meals Era began as a meals truck in Roxbury and close by areas, hiring skilled cooks to develop menus. Whereas the truck nonetheless operates, the corporate has since expanded its focus to catering, teaming up with organizations that wished to serve more healthy and extra culturally related meals at their occasions.
Two weeks into the pandemic, Recent Meals Era obtained a name from the Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Basis asking to work collectively to supply meals for individuals combating meals insecurity. The corporate partnered with Mass Basic Brigham to ship custom-made grocery packing containers to Medicaid recipients with particular dietary wants. The corporate has additionally transitioned to dwelling deliveries of ready meals and has even begun delivery nationwide.
Just lately, Recent Meals Era debuted a menu impressed by New Orleans chef and civil rights activist Leah Chase. “It was actually enjoyable having meals that’s interactive with individuals. It turns into an expertise—it turns into about storytelling,” Campbell says.
And in 2021, the corporate opened a everlasting restaurant in Dorchester. “I actually take pleasure in having the ability to present individuals meals with love, and to know that what I’m giving somebody goes to style good and is sweet for his or her our bodies,” she says.
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