“I always say, in the worst moments of humanity, the best of humanity comes out.” That’s what Chef José Andrés, the founder and Chief Feeding Officer of World Central Kitchen, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper just days after Hurricane Helene left a path of destruction across six Southern states. The WCK team was among the first wave of relief crews on the ground, cooking and serving meals and delivering water to some of the hardest-hit communities.
WCK is using two helicopters to deliver food to those who are stranded and, in some cases, using whatever means — by ATV or on foot — to get the meals to their final destinations.
World Central Kitchen teams are in four states serving meals and looking to widen their reach. The team prepositioned across the southeast just before Helene hit so that they were able to serve the first meals to those in the impacted areas.
WCK works by going into disaster zones and partnering with local chefs and restaurants whenever possible. In Asheville, they’ve teamed up with a number of people, including one of the city’s most popular chefs, Katie Button.
Chef Katie’s restaurant, Cúrate (typically one of the hottest reservations in the mountain town), is hosting WCK, cooking and distributing more than 1,000 meals to the community each day.
Chef Katie posted on Instagram that this is also helping her own staff, saying, “This has allowed us the incredible fortune to bring back as many staff members as are able to safely find transportation to come back to work at a living wage and assist with meal preparation and packaging. Their positivity and enthusiasm have been truly inspirational.”
Chef Katie says they’re hoping to churn out even more meals as more of her staff are able to return to work.
Chloe Mata Crane, a spokesperson for World Central Kitchen, says the nonprofit has 16 restaurant partners in North Carolina and Tennessee, as well as two Rapid Relief Field Kitchens — one in Florida and the other in Asheville. They’re also working with 35 food trucks in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee.
Chloe says, “We are deploying five tankers of water that are currently in Asheville and the surrounding areas to deal with the acute water shortage due to infrastructure damage.”
The idea for WCK first started to take shape when Chef José went to Haiti to cook after a devastating earthquake struck the small island in 2010.
When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston seven years later, he and several other chefs helped prepare meals there. Just a month later, when a hurricane hit Puerto Rico, Chef José again boarded a plane to help. While cooking there, he came up with the idea of World Central Kitchen.
Chef José told Anderson Cooper, “This is the biggest power of what WCK brings. It’s not WCK helping the people of North Carolina or Tennessee, it’s actually the people of those communities coming together and us empowering the citizens to have what they need. Yes, these moments are hard for everybody, but I believe every day will get better, and hopefully, before we know it … I do believe, day by day, things will get better.”
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