In the late 1980s, during the peak of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Barbara Hughes was working as a chef in a Lower Manhattan restaurant and struggling to contain her anger over the many friends she was losing to the disease. Her life changed one shift when a cook invited her to a meeting of the activist group ACT UP.
“He said, ‘I’m going to take you somewhere, and you can get some of that anger out of you,’” she recalled.
Hughes threw herself into activism, as ACT UP pressed for more research into treatment and better access to lifesaving drugs. Within a few years, she began to feel restless at her restaurant job and decided she wanted to do something different with her life. Then she spotted a job posting from the shelter provider Project Renewal, which was trying to expand into workforce training and needed someone to run a culinary program.
“It was like a miracle,” Hughes said.
She was hired in 1992 and helped build a job-training program for people who are homeless, formerly homeless or involved in the criminal justice system. New Yorkers enrolled in the free six-month program start their training at in-house kitchens controlled by Project Renewal, followed by a three-month internship at a restaurant or another nonprofit. Trainees are assisted with job placement after they graduate, and they are welcomed back if their life circumstances change.
“The idea of the support system that we provide to everyone is really important to this program,” Hughes said. “We’re supporting somebody from day one to the time that they don’t want us or need us anymore.”
Using culinary jobs as a tool for social uplift was a novel idea at the time, Hughes said, but in the ensuing decades it has been embraced by dozens of charities nationwide.
Meanwhile, Hughes continued her AIDS activism — helping found the prominent research and policy organization Treatment Action Group, which grew out of ACT UP. Hughes served for years as board president at TAG, which has been credited with helping to accelerate the development of groundbreaking antiretroviral drugs during the 1990s.
“There was no way I was going to start reading science texts, like a lot of the other folks were doing, and be able to sit next to Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and chat about clinical trials,” Hughes said. “But I had a lot of management experience and helped form the board, helped grow the organization.”
Project Renewal’s culinary organization, which started out as a city-funded pilot called Comfort Foods and is now named City Beet Kitchens, expanded throughout the 1990s as fellow nonprofits asked her to help cater their events. Around 2015 the group split its work into two divisions: a “supportive” side that cooks meals for shelters and other nonprofit institutions, and a more standard events business that brings in most of City Beet’s revenue by catering meals for weddings and cocktail parties.
Last year City Beet brought in about $7 million in revenue with a surplus of $675,000 — although its actual cash on hand was less, due to the city’s chronically late contract payments that have frustrated Hughes and scores of other nonprofit leaders.
Each day, under Hughes’ leadership, City Beet’s staff of about 90 people — most of whom are formerly homeless or touched by the justice system — work out of a dozen different kitchens to prepare about 2,500 daily meals for 18 nonprofits, plus 2,800 meals for Project Renewal’s seven shelters.
Hughes estimates that the organization has launched the culinary careers of some 2,000 people. Though her various roles may look distinct on paper, she said her work in the restaurant industry, her leadership at City Beet and her AIDS advocacy are all part of the same project.
“I used all the skills I learned in the food service industry and I just brought it into managing these things,” she said. “It all just feels like social activism at the end of the day.”
