Sailesh Rao | Oct 8, 2026

Any community can start Together Around Food with a kitchen, a chef, a few volunteers and an open door. This guide shows how, using what the first 15-day pilot in Jefferson County, Washington taught us.

Download the Guide

What is Together Around Food

Together Around Food (TAF) offers free, gourmet, whole-food, plant-based vegan meals to everyone in a community. The long-term aim is three meals a day, seven days a week, at no charge, so that healthy food is more subsidized than the unhealthy foods that receive systemic subsidies today. This overturns the disease-normal model of Planet A into the health-normal model of Planet B. The program was pioneered in Washington State in June 2026 and is designed to be copied anywhere.

The mission is to feed everyone while building community connection, public health, strong local food systems and ecological balance. It rests on the premise that nourishing food is a basic human right and a shared community responsibility. It especially puts on the onus on educational institutions to prioritize the well-being of their students and faculty members over the interests of profit-seeking entities.

The program has six goals:

• Eliminate hunger and malnutrition. Everyone eats, whatever their income or circumstances.
• Improve human health. Whole-food, plant-based meals support the prevention of chronic disease.
• Strengthen community. Shared tables create connection, learning and mutual support.
• Accelerate the plant-based transition. People taste the food and feel the difference for themselves.
• Support local food systems. Local growers and producers supply the kitchen.
• Restore planetary health. Less pressure on land, water, biodiversity and climate.

Ground rules every TAF event keeps

These rules are what make an event Together Around Food and not another meal program.

• Free for everyone. No charge, no application, no means testing.
• Open to all. Anyone who walks in gets a seat. Guests may invite all their friends.
• Fully plant-based. Every dish is vegan and built on whole foods.
• Gourmet, not institutional. The food has to be so good that people come back for it.
• Eaten together where possible. Taking a meal home, or to a sick neighbor, is fine. Ask guests to bring a reusable container.
• No pressure. Nobody is converted or made to sit through a talk. Presentations are optional.
• Cooked together. A team cooks from one shared menu, which keeps quality high and waste low.

Choose your starting size

Start with the size your team can sustain, then grow. A weekly meal that runs every week does more than a big launch that burns out its volunteers.

The monthly meal in detail

The San Marcos group serves on the second Monday of each month from 4 to 5 pm. Setup and cleanup stretch the commitment to 3:30 to 5 pm.

• Three volunteers each cook the same recipe, sized to serve 15. A fourth brings fruit.
• Each cook spends about $30 on ingredients and is reimbursed against receipts.
• Recipes come from the Universal Meals program, which avoids the top nine food allergens in the US.
• Cooks do not need to be vegan themselves. They only need to follow the recipe.

The weekly TAF in detail

A potluck asks each person to bring a finished dish. A TAF asks each person to bring ingredients for a curated menu, then the group cooks together and makes extra for neighbors.

1. Agree on a menu and publish it online.
2. Pool the ingredients and cook as a team.
3. Open the community center doors to the public for a free meal.
4. Give a short talk and hand out educational materials.
5. Repeat weekly, and add days as the local team grows.

Buying in bulk and cooking together cuts food waste and packaging. We expect this to lower each household’s food cost over time.

What the Jefferson County pilot showed

The first Together Around Food served about 3,500 free meals in 15 days at roughly $3 a meal. It ran from June 20 to July 4, 2026 at the Tri-Area Community Center in Chimacum, near Port Townsend.

Attendance grew daily, helped by word of mouth. A June 20 article in the Peninsula Daily News brought inquiries from Port Angeles and Sequim, including people asking for a TAF in their own town.

Who came mattered as much as how many. Farmers, retirees, healthcare workers, tradespeople and families sat at the same tables. Conversations ran from recipes and gardens to housing and health.

Some guests reported personal health changes. One organizer lost 5 pounds and lowered her cholesterol by 60 points in 10 days. These are individual accounts, not study results.

Build your coalition

Find a trusted local convener first, and let local people lead. The pilot worked because one longtime organizer opened doors to local groups, and outside partners supplied the kitchen and expertise.

You do not need every role for a weekly meal. A convener, a host venue, a menu lead and a handful of cooks are sufficient.

Invite the people already doing food work in your area before you announce anything. That means food banks, farms, community gardens, public health staff, existing meal programs, schools and clinics. Ask how TAF can strengthen what they do.

Plan in three phases

A launch runs in three phases: outreach, the dining days, and continuation. Give outreach more time than the pilot did. It had eleven days, and we later wished the community had been better prepared.

Before outreach begins

1. Form the core team and agree who decides what.
2. Secure a venue with a kitchen, a dining hall and parking. A community center worked well.
3. Confirm the lead chef and a kitchen team large enough for your schedule.
4. Line up funding for ingredients, with a margin for attendance that doubles.
5. Check local rules for serving food to the public, including permits and insurance, with your venue and health department.
6. Publish a web page with dates, meal times, location and a way to confirm attendance.

During the dining days

1. Post each day’s menu online and at the door.
2. Count meals served at every sitting, so you can order accurately and report honestly.
3. Hold a short team check-in each day to fix what went wrong.
4. Have a larger room in mind. By day 6 the pilot hall was full and the team was looking for more space.
5. Collect stories, photos and video as you go, with permission.

A closing event

End with something the community makes together. The pilot closed on July 4 with a grand banquet and a town hall event. Choose a date and an event that mean something where you live.

The kitchen and the menu

Build each day on a simple pattern: a hearty breakfast, soup with a grain bowl at lunch, and a main dish with a small dessert at dinner. The pilot repeated favorite dishes every few days, which keeps shopping simple and lets cooks get faster.

A sample three-day menu

These three days are taken from the pilot schedule, June 29 to July 1. Every linked recipe is free on the site.

Recipes and scaling

The recipe library holds about 50 dishes by chef Marlene Watson-Tara, sorted into breakfasts, soups, salads, mains and desserts. Each lists prep time, cooking time and yield.

• Most recipes serve 4 to 6, so you will multiply them. Test a scaled batch before opening day, because seasoning and cooking times do not scale in a straight line.
• Soups, curries and bean dishes scale most easily and hold well for service.
• For a small or allergy-sensitive start, the Universal Meals recipes avoid the top nine US allergens.
• Label every dish with its ingredients. Nuts, soy, sesame and gluten appear often in these menus.

Sourcing

• Buy staples in bulk: grains, beans, lentils, tofu, tahini, spices. This cuts cost and packaging.
• Buy produce from local growers where you can. Supporting local farms is one of the six goals.
• The pilot cooked largely with organic ingredients and still averaged about $3 a meal.
• Plan the next day’s menu around what is left, so little is wasted.

The daily rhythm

Keep meal times fixed, so people can plan their day around them. The pilot used the same three windows every day and held one talk after dinner.

Evening programming

Mix outside experts with local voices, and leave room for the community to talk back. The pilot’s 15 evenings fell into four kinds:

• Health and nutrition. A physician on the research, and the health partner on its lifestyle program.
• Food and the planet. Talks linking food systems to climate and ecological restoration.
• Cooking and eating well. The lead chef on how to eat this way at home.
• Community conversations. Panels with local doctors and organizers, and open town halls in the final days.

The pilot review found the education side needed more time for round-table discussion and community engagement. Plan at least as many conversation evenings as talks.

Helping neighbors meet

• Seat people at shared tables, not in rows.
• Run short “speed networking” rounds, so people who would never otherwise meet find common cause.
• Put a greeter at the door to welcome first-timers and explain how the meal works.
• Invite creative volunteers in. One pilot volunteer photographed guests and built an album for display at the venue.

Health tracking

Offer guests the option to measure their own health before and after, and always with a medical partner. Seeing their own numbers change makes the case personal in a way no talk can.

In the pilot, guests could take basic biometric screenings at the start and end of the 15 days. Healthcare professionals from the Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute reviewed the results with them. Common measures were weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar. Many guests simply paid attention to how they felt.

How to run it responsibly:

• Keep it voluntary. Nobody should need a screening to get a meal.
• Use qualified people. A clinic, a lifestyle medicine group or local nurses should take and explain the readings.
• Tell guests on medication to talk to their doctor first. Blood pressure and blood sugar can shift quickly with a change in diet, and doses may need adjusting.
• Protect privacy. Results belong to the guest. Share stories only with written permission.
• Report honestly. Individual stories are encouraging, but they are not proof. Say so when you share them.

The Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute runs the Jumpstart program, which the pilot introduced to its guests. Ask them about partnering if you have no local clinic.

Volunteers

Recruit local volunteers early and put them in every part of the work. The pilot leaned on a visiting kitchen team, and we later realized more local hands would have made the handover smoother.

How to organize them:

• Open a sign-up page with named shifts. The pilot used a registration form on the TAF site. The San Marcos group uses a free online sign-up sheet.
• Give each area one lead, so new volunteers know whom to ask.
• Run a short kitchen briefing on hygiene and allergens before anyone handles food. Encourage volunteers to get a local food handler’s license.
• Feed your volunteers and thank them publicly. Many of the pilot’s kitchen volunteers were elders who traveled a long way to help.
• Tell visiting volunteers what you can and cannot provide. The pilot asked them to arrange their own accommodation.

What volunteers get back is the reason they stay: new friends, new skills, and a part in building a model other communities can use.

Money

In the US, budget about $3 in ingredients for each meal you expect to serve. That was the pilot’s average at retail prices with mostly organic food, which puts 3,500 meals at roughly $10,500.

A quick way to size your own budget:

meals per sitting × sittings per day × days × $3 = ingredient budget

A weekly dinner for 60 people comes to about $180 a week on that basis. Add venue, equipment, printing and insurance on top, since the $3 figure only covers food.

Where the pilot’s funding came from

Ways to raise it locally

• Offer sponsorships in plain units. Let a business or family sponsor a meal, a day, or simply contribute.
• Find a matching grant first. A match gives every small donor a reason to give now.
• Ask for ingredients as well as cash. Farms, grocers and co-ops can often give produce.
• Publish what you spent. Guests ask who pays for the meals, so show them.

How the cost falls over time

The weekly model is designed to need no outside funding. When members bring ingredients for a shared menu, the group buys in bulk and wastes very little. We expect each household to spend less on food than it did cooking alone.

Outreach and the questions people ask

Tell people plainly who is behind the event, who pays for it, and what you hope they take away. In Jefferson County, residents asked exactly these questions, and a few stayed away for fear of being “lured into a cult”. Clear answers given early are the remedy.

Getting the word out

• Start with personal visits. Meet local groups, businesses and civic leaders before any public announcement.
• Brief the local paper. One article in a regional daily drew inquiries from Port Angeles and Sequim.
• Lead with the invitation. The pilot’s line was “Free. Open to all. Come hungry. Leave inspired.”
• Make it easy to say yes. Publish dates, meal times, the address and a simple attendance form.
• Let guests recruit. Word of mouth filled the hall. Ask every guest to bring a friend next time.
• Record it. Photos, short videos and guest stories help the next community start.

Ready answers

These answers follow the pilot’s FAQ. Adapt them, print them, and make sure every volunteer knows them.

When partners raise questions

Be ready to explain each partner’s role. In the pilot, some residents were uneasy about the wider beliefs of one funding partner. A local organizer described the right response as listening, asking questions, and focusing on shared values while respecting differences. Decide in advance how you will introduce each partner, and keep the meal itself free of any group’s promotion.

Lessons from the first run

The pilot succeeded beyond our expectations, and it also showed where the next community can do better. We identified four avenues for improvements, and Patty Schmucker writing in the Port Townsend Leader added the community’s view.

After the launch

The hardest step is the one after the last banquet. The pilot’s aim was to continue indefinitely as a permanent gathering place. In practice, local residents took up the question of how to shape what they had learned into something of their own.

• Before the launch ends, name the local group that will carry it on.
• Drop to a rhythm you can hold, such as one meal a week, and build back up.
• Keep learning together. The site suggests study groups that watch a video, cook a recipe and share a meal.
• Write up your numbers and stories, and send them to the TAF team so the next community benefits.

Launch checklist

Tick these off before opening day. Skip the last group for a single weekly or monthly meal.

People and place

• ☐ Core team formed, with one lead each for kitchen, hospitality, logistics, outreach and events
• ☐ Local host organization confirmed
• ☐ Existing local food groups consulted and invited
• ☐ Venue booked, with kitchen, dining hall and a backup room
• ☐ Food-service rules, permits and insurance checked with the venue and health department

Food

• ☐ Format and schedule chosen
• ☐ Menu set and published online
• ☐ Recipes scaled and test-cooked
• ☐ Bulk suppliers and local growers lined up
• ☐ Allergen labels and takeaway plan ready

Money and volunteers

• ☐ Ingredient budget calculated at about $3 a meal
• ☐ Funding, sponsors and any matching grant secured
• ☐ Donation link live
• ☐ Volunteer sign-up open, shifts filled, kitchen briefing held

Outreach

• ☐ Web page live with dates, times, address and attendance form
• ☐ FAQ printed and learned by every volunteer
• ☐ Local press briefed
• ☐ Partners page shows who is involved and who pays

For a multi-day launch

• ☐ Speakers and conversation evenings scheduled
• ☐ Health partner and screening plan in place
• ☐ Meal counts, photos and stories being recorded
• ☐ Closing event planned
• ☐ Local team named to continue after the last day

Get help and free resources

Write to info@togetheraround.food before you plan, because the TAF team will list your event on the website and help you host it. You can also use the contact form or join the online community.

Sources

• Together Around Food home page
• About
• FAQ
• Volunteer
• Partners
• Resources
• Together Around Food in Jefferson County
• SMUUF Food Healers
• Around the table: What a community food experiment taught us, Patty Schmucker, Port Townsend Leader
• Help Needed on Together Around Food, Climate Healers
• Days 4-6 of Together Around Food, Climate Healers
• Come Hungry Leave Inspired, Climate Healers
• From Potlucks to TAFs, Climate Healers