84 SMITHSONIAN.COM | December 2019Traditionally, feeding disaster vic-
tims has been the responsibility of the
same relief organizations that provide
shelter and medical care, and most of
the time the food is an afterthought:
meals cooked in expensive mobile
kitchens or, worse, MREs, military-style
Meals Ready to Eat, such as “rib-shaped
barbecue fl avored pork” with a shelf life
of somewhere close to forever.
Andrés acknowledges that an instant
meal that can be stored indefi nitely
without refrigeration is “an amazing ac-
complishment by humanity,” but says
it is meant for soldiers in combat zones,
not families displaced from their homes.
And so World Central Kitchen strives to
source food locally, and wrangles local
chefs and volunteers to cook it in near-
by commercial kitchens. In other words,
WCK staff don’t helicopter into a disaster
area and pretend to have all the answers;
they leverage the community’s knowl-
edge and resources, and provide support.
Which is often cheaper. On average, a hot
meal prepared by World Central Kitchen
costs between $2.50 and $4—and much
of that money goes to pay farmers, cooks
or the guy driving the food truck. The av-
erage cost of an MRE is $8 to $10.
“People ask, José, how do you get the
food?” says Nate Mook, WCK’s execu-
tive director. “He always looks at them
like they’re crazy. ‘I’m a chef. That’s
what I do. I get food.’ Our model is en-
tirely diff erent from the way it’s always
worked. We’re software, not hardware.”
At a time when chefs are often as-
sociated with frivolity or decadence,
Andrés uses his renown to open doors
and smooth the bumpy path to change.
“He is the perfect social enterprise,”
says Egger. “His success in business as a
world-class chef gets him in rooms that,
God knows, I could never get into and
he uses that to help people.”
Not that he enjoys sitting around a
conference room table. “There are too
many meetings and too many speech-
es, too much wasteful money thrown
at projects when we don’t have enough
boots on the ground,” he said. “Let’s get
the people in the offi ces and meeting
rooms out and making things happen.”José Andrés
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