Kinship Community Food Center Celebrates Groundbreaking for New Building, Launches Public Phase of Capital Campaign

Expanded home at the crossroads of Riverwest and Harambee will grow Kinship's capacity to care for the whole person with food as the entry point to belonging, stability and opportunity

MILWAUKEE —Today, Kinship Community Food Center, formerly Riverwest Food Pantry, marked the groundbreaking for its new home and publicly launched the next phase of its Building a Place for Kinship capital campaign. The launch follows 16 months of private fundraising, a major step toward Kinship’s mission to end hunger, isolation and poverty in the City of Milwaukee.

"From the outside, Kinship might seem like just another food pantry or poverty resource, but our approach is different. We use food to create a social ecosystem to create kinship, to be in community with one another,” said Vincent Noth, President & CEO of Kinship Community Food Center. “This new building will give us the capacity to reach twice as many neighbors, expand our crisis and workforce services and finally match our space to the size of our mission. Kinship is not just our name, Kinship is our strategy."

The new 28,000-square-foot Community Food Center, rising at the corner of Locust and Holton at the crossroads of Riverwest and Harambee, will make Kinship one of the first organizations of its kind in Milwaukee: a place where food is the entry point to a full suite of wraparound support. The space is designed to double the number of days Kinship can serve the community and will include private consultation rooms for crisis and workforce services, a production kitchen to grow its culinary job-training program, as well as a greenhouse, courtyard and chapel. Beyond the food market, neighbors will find a range of support tailored to their needs, whether that's mentoring through a housing crisis, a paid path toward steady work, counseling or simply a shared meal that draws them out of isolation.

“Kinship made room for me to do the work of rebuilding my own life and made sure I did not have to do that work alone,” said Nikki Danielson, a community member who, after participating in Kinship’s Workforce program, now serves as Kinship Café’s Operations Manager.

Since its founding in 1979, Kinship has built its model around three pillars: nourishment, belonging and prosperity, and has been a place where everyone gives and everyone receives. Today, the organization serves more than 19,000 shoppers each year – including families with an average income below $1,300 a month – from a subleased basement facility with limited storage, programming and accessibility. The new building funded through the Building a Place for Kinship capital campaign will allow Kinship to operate at its full potential, providing holistic resources for the community. During construction, all of Kinship's services will continue at their current site throughout the construction process.

"For more than forty-seven years, Kinship's innovative model has only been constrained by the size of its borrowed space," said Nan Gardetto, local business leader, philanthropist and the campaign's honorary co-chair. "At some point you have to stake a flag in the ground and show people what's possible. A dedicated location demonstrates that this work is important and that this community matters. That's why I continually invest, not just in Kinship's programs, but to change the way hunger is addressed in our city."

With more than 86% of its $18 million goal already raised through private fundraising, Kinship is now asking the broader community to help close the remaining $2.5 million and bring the new Community Food Center to life. For community members looking to support this project, gifts can be made at www.buildingaplaceforkinship.org/donate.