DC Central Kitchen is a nationally recognized "community kitchen" that recycles food from around Washington DC and uses it as a tool to train unemployed adults to develop work skills while providing thousands of meals for local service agencies in the process.
DC Central Kitchen was founded in 1989 by Robert Egger. Egger was working in the bar/nightclub scene in DC when he and his wife were talked into volunteering with a church group that bought food to prepare and distribute from the back of a van. Its first major food recovery was from the 1989 inaugural party for President George H.W. Bush.