World Central Kitchen: Meet the heroes supplying food to refugees in a warzone

Joe McNamee on how the Irish food industry is aiding World Central Kitchen to feed refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine

Niall and Matt Daniels, in Sheridan’s HQ, in Co Meath, before heading off for Poland.

March 4: a friend is driving me to the bus station in Galway when Seamus Sheridan calls on the car speaker phone. Conversation with Seamus can sometimes be akin to stepping into a fast-flowing stream, its original source someway back upriver. Today, we are plunged headlong into a torrent. The topic, pretty much the only one, anyone, anywhere, has talked about in the last two weeks: Russia’s shocking invasion of Ukraine, on February 24.

Seamus wants to do something. Seamus wants to send an aid consignment of Irish farmhouse cheese. Five minutes before my bus is due to depart, he arrives at the station. We talk briefly. I agree to help. We set up a WhatsApp group and call it ‘Bia Do Ukraine’.

In 1995, working on the olive stalls, travelling from Cork to Galway’s Farmer’s Market, I first met Seamus and his brother, Kevin, selling cheeses on a neighbouring stall. Today, they own Sheridan’s Cheesemongers, operating nationwide, regularly transporting cheese to and from Europe. They have the logistics know-how and want to send a vanload of Irish farmhouse cheese to World Central Kitchen, a US non-profit humanitarian organisation.

Spanish-born José Andrés is one of the US’s most-famous chefs, with multiple outlets including a Michelin two-starred and four Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurants. He has also been sued by a US president. When Donald Trump began referring to Latinos as “murderers” and “rapists”, Andrés countered online and pulled restaurants from Trump properties. Trump sued, Andrés counter-sued.

His great friend Anthony Bourdain proudly noted the case (eventually settled out of court) in the late Bourdain’s food travelogue TV show, Unknown Parts, when he and Andrés travelled to the Spaniard’s birthplace, Asturias, in Northwestern Spain.

José Andrés

In the episode, as they eat and drink their way around this mountainous region, Andrés exudes rambunctious energy, rude, earthy vitality, with a lust for wringing every last drop out of life, especially for eating and drinking. In full flight, even Bourdain seems content to exist in his shade.

But Andrés is so much more than a bon vivant: he equally divines the “political” in food, and, after moving from Spain aged 21, began volunteering with a Washington-based non-profit, DC Central Kitchen, tackling hunger and poverty in the local community.

In 2010, following the massive earthquake, Andrés volunteered in Haiti as part of the humanitarian relief response. It inspired him to found World Central Kitchen (WCK), a non-profit organisation to provide fresh meals in response to crises anywhere in the world.

WCK has since organised first-responder teams of chefs and volunteers to organise and run mobile kitchens delivering meals all over the world. In Puerto Rico, in 2017, WCK served more than 2m meals in the first month immediately after Hurricane Maria.

Within hours of the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine, WCK was serving hot meals to fleeing refugees and is now operating along the Ukrainian border in Poland, Romania, Hungary and Moldova. WCK teams are even cooking and distributing meals and food supplies in Ukraine itself.

Andrés and the equally remarkable Nate Mook, WCK’s CEO, have been there since February 25, travelling throughout the region. WCK operates right up to the war’s frontlines, Andrés and his team were among the first to enter Bucha, after the Russians pulled back, and WCK are still delivering food aid to Mariupol.

Cooking in a warzone

Prepping and cooking food for distribution in the warehouse hub.

Despite wall-to-wall global media coverage, daily tweets and videos from the duo offer a unique insight into this war: Andrés’s delivery, often raw, emotional, heartfelt; Nate’s, even, calm, steady, equally as compelling.

Nate and his team had been working for four days at Kramatorsk train station when, on April 9, they heard explosions. Nate tweeted: “We weren’t far from the Kramatorsk train station when missiles hit, picking up flour from a @WCKitchen warehouse to bring to a bakery. Others can share images, but I can tell you innocent women & children were murdered here today. Our local team continues to work to get food out.” A further tweet read: “Yesterday I stood at the Kramatorsk station as we planned to serve food & coffee to 1000s evacuating. Today we saw their murder – Moms. Kids. People burned alive in their cars. We are in shock but @WCKitchen is not running away – we must stand with the people of Ukraine against evil.” The WCK operation model differs from traditional humanitarian aid responses which invariably deliver vast quantities of imported food supplies into a disaster zone. Instead, WCK always keeps it local, working with local communities, hospitality and chefs, sourcing local produce, wherever possible, to serve to those most in need. The reason for this is twofold.

A native hospitality sector in a disaster zone already possesses a deep well of local resources and knowledge: staff, supplemented by WCK chefs; cooking and storage infrastructure; established connections with food supply chains; knowhow for tracking down essential requirements such as water supplies, generators, fuel sources, and problem solving in general.

On April 16, Nate tweets: “An update I hoped I’d never have to make. I’m at a @WCKitchen restaurant in Kharkiv, where less than 24 hours ago I was meeting with their amazing team. Today, a missile stuck. 4 staff were wounded. This is the reality here –cooking is a heroic act of bravery. #ChefsForUkraine.”

The following day, he tweets: “The work doesn’t stop! Today, the restaurant team is moving all food products and non-damaged equipment to another kitchen location in Kharkiv. The injured staff are doing well– and all the team here wants to continue cooking. Truly in awe at the bravery of our @WCKitchen partners!” 

The other reason for WCK’s “local” focus is to build resilience into these responder teams, so as not to disrupt the local economy, and for it to continue when WCK pull out. By using donated funds, WCK is able to reactivate and pay local restaurants to cook food, putting money back into devastated economies, rather than “competing” by simply distributing aid. Small local supply chains where possible keeps local food infrastructures intact and resilient for the future.

And local people know what local people most like to eat. Even in great crisis, food can be more than just nutrition; familiar tastes and smells can also offer comfort and reassurance on a primal level.

“The first thing WCK did in Ukraine,” says Seamus, “is learn what Ukrainians wanted to eat, what is their comfort food, WCK don’t impose their own menus on the people they are cooking for.” If Seamus is the “heart” of our BDU collective, Kevin, the company’s managing director, overseeing daily operations, is the ‘head’.

“Most people were trying to find something to do – you feel so helpless watching [the war]. Seamus mentioned trying to get some cheese over to WCK, and I said, ‘Right, that’s something I can do. I have the connections, I have the experience, here is something I can physically do, we can send a van full of cheese’.” I presumed my own role in BDU might involve writing or media; it turned out to be Chief Bum. The Irish farmhouse cheesemakers had responded to an initial request for aid from Kevin with astonishing generosity, and several of the major dairy co-ops followed with offers of creamery cheese.

I started calling. Barry’s Tea donated 160,000 tea bags. Lakeland Dairies gave 1,800l of UHT milk. Real Bread Ireland members donated almost 4t of flour and oats, some of it Irish grown – the irony of sending flour to Ukraine, lost on no one. To be honest, it wasn’t “bumming”, it was pushing an open door. Offers kept rolling in, all glad of the chance to do something, anything, to help.

I left a message on an answering machine at Musgrave’s, Ireland’s largest wholesale/retail grocery operation. The following day, it was returned: delighted to donate but also wondering if we’d have any use for an articulated truck and volunteer drivers to take it anywhere we wanted in Europe.

There are too many donors to list entirely, but that’s pretty much how it went, surfing unparalleled generosity from all parts of the Irish food ecosystem, from small artisan producers to large agri-food businesses, resulting in an entire 40-foot articulated truck filled with 20t of premium Irish produce, including almost 12t of Irish cheese.

Break for the border

Uncle and nephew driver team Niall and Matt Daniels, on arrival at the World Central Kitchen hub in Przemysl, Poland. 

On April 5, uncle-and-nephew team Niall and Matty Daniels drove the truck onto the midnight ferry at Rosslare heading for Dunkerque, final destination: Poland.

“The one TV image I recall over and over again,” says Niall, “is that of the Ukrainian father, kissing his little girl goodbye, and putting her on a train, whilst crying uncontrollably. He places a chain or tag or memento over her head. It says to me, ‘I may never see you again, this is what you’ll remember me by.’ I don’t think there’s a father alive who couldn’t see himself in that position, with his family, and the absolute horror of having to make that choice. That is why I wanted to get involved.”

The crossing took 24 hours and they drove, through France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, 19 hours a day between them including breaks before taking the compulsory 11-hour stop. The reality of their involvement only hit home in Poland.

“Poland was exempting any aid vehicles from toll fees,” says Matt, “and at one toll, we noticed all these ordinary cars, vans, taxis, full to the brim with boxes of stuff, pampers nappies, wipes, bags of clothes, first aid equipment, and with homemade Ukrainian flags or red crosses, in the windows, from all over Europe; Italians, Dutch, German, French, Polish.

“It was lovely to see, with so much badness going on, it would restore your faith in humanity.”

Niall adds: “As we approached the Ukrainian border, we passed trucks with old stock; French and German ambulances on board, and low loaders with war machinery heading for Ukraine. In the other direction, convoys of ambulances bringing the sick into Poland. As we were overtaking slower Ukrainian trucks, drivers would be giving you a silent look, saying ‘thanks’ with their eyes. Our cab went deathly quiet, with about a half hour to go.”

“A couple of coaches with Ukrainian registrations passed,” says Matty, “full of just women and children. You knew where they’d come from and what they’d left behind, husbands, fathers, brothers – it was just terrible.” They finally reached the WCK hub in Przemyśl, in southeast Poland, 15km from the Ukrainian border, at lunchtime on Saturday April 9.

“The best thing about the trip,” says Niall, “was seeing the WCK operation, the actual process the donations will undergo: prepping, cooking, packing and dispatching meals to go straight across the border, to where its needed in Ukraine. The team in Przemyśl are playing a blinder. It was an experience I’ll take to the grave.”

Kyle Coppinger is a field procurement associate with WCK and has been based in Przemyśl since shortly after the war began, where the pretty little Polish town has become one of the biggest transit hubs for fleeing refugees, the centre of an enormous international humanitarian response.

“When I arrived,” says Kyle, “it was cold, chaotic, and we were trying to figure out the best way to get aid started. Refugees were already flooding over the border.” As well as prepping food, the Przemyśl hub also directs donations to other WCK kitchens in the region. The BDU consignment will be broken down and used in different ways. “We have an operation that’s creating upwards of 11,000 sandwiches a day in Lviv,” says Kyle, “that directly provides aid to the population moving through, and cheese is a commodity that doesn’t exist right now, so the Irish cheese will go to that. It’s likely some people haven’t had a cup of tea in 48 days, that is now almost like a luxury item. The [800kg] of pasta will sustain people in the most deprived areas, where we can’t get fresh food into.

“And the quality of the Irish cheese is insane – we are very focussed on creating balanced, nutritious meals but certain elements aren’t on a nutrition chart: heart, soul, love; this consignment typified the best of those.

“Food is ‘home’, it changes everything just for a moment, and when we interact with some of the people we are serving, if we can get a recipe from them, we will do everything we can to replicate that and bring them a taste of home. 

"It doesn’t change the fact they may have lost their home, may never go back, but it can transport them there in their minds, just for a few moments.” As a small token of respect and gratitude, the BDU delivery included two little care packages of Irish food and drink for the Przemyśl WCK team.

“It was amazing,” says Kyle, who has worked for 50 days straight, “it made me feel welcomed, loved. We stayed up well past a sensible hour, consuming beautiful cheese, drinking beer, talking, it was so cathartic. We still talk about that night; a distraction, transporting us away from the reality of everything going on. That’s what food does, sustains your body... recharges your soul.”

When you hear WCK’s Ukrainian mission has cooked 10.3m meals and shifted 5.8m pounds of food to date, the BDU consignment seems a tiny craft in a very large ocean but, for a brief while, it made all involved, organisers, donors, drivers, feel slightly less helpless in the face of such overwhelming inhumanity.

The WCK operation is now concentrating on using local supply chains, but with Ukraine’s future still uncertain, Kyle says “never say never”. So for now, BDU will focus on encouraging direct donations to WCK

“In the early days,” says Seamus, “José [Andrés] put up a video saying he was not scared of being out there – of the bombs, of being killed – but he was scared people would stop caring about what is happening in Ukraine. What we did showed we care, we sent a bit of love back over there.”

Donate to World Central Kitchen’s Ukrainian operations at www.wck.org