Local non-profit expands efforts to bring fine dining to hungry
12.13.2018 - Advanced Reporting (JOUR 3010)
For the 27.7 percent of Cincinnatians that fall at or below the poverty line, hunger or food insecurity can be a daunting reality. Meanwhile, grocery stores are on the other end of the spectrum — throwing out or losing 1.3 billion tons of food globally, each year. That’s where La Soupe comes in, a non-profit dedicated to closing the gap between hunger and food waste in Cincinnati. Although La Soupe has been around for four years now, they are expanding with the help of some ambitious University of Cincinnati Bearcats, to further their efforts in the Queen City.
La Soupe’s mission is to turn food waste from local grocery stores into delicious, gourmet “Soupe” for those experiencing hunger. This effort began in 2014 after professional chef Suzy DeYoung came across the Facebook post of a grade school teacher. “I personally know of several children who were given six meals throughout the day [at school], because they starved all weekend,” expressed the Lower Price Hill teacher’s post. “One girl was too weak to climb the steps. I carried her, put her in a desk, and had to administer the state standardized test.” This testimony compelled DeYoung to load up all the food she could manage from the French restaurant she owned at the time and deliver it to those students to take home. DeYoung had been in the business for twenty-five years cooking for the likes of George W. Bush and Julia Child, but decided to hang up her Toque Blanche after seeing this need firsthand— thus La Soupe was born.
With the help of over forty-seven food agencies, La Soup collects about five thousand pounds of produce and food waste a week and transforms it into delicious, gastronome-worthy soups. The soup is then delivered to schools and churches, served at La Soupe’s OTR headquarters, and given out on the streets of Cincinnati. But with the program growing exponentially, the non-profit is looking to increase its efforts to help even more Cincinnatians in need. It was recently announced that La Soupe will be moving to a larger location in 2019. This new facility, located in the Walnut Hills neighborhood, will provide 4,000 square feet of production and distribution space in a neighborhood currently considered a food desert. An additional 1,000 square foot storefront will house their vision of rooting culinary education into their mission of Rescue, Transform, Share.
To help with the expansion, UC students are getting in on the action. This past semester La Soupe paired with Students ‘Consulting for Non-Profit Organizations’ or SCNO, a UC organization that offers pro-bono consulting for Non-Profits, to help meet their goals and increase efficiency. “We wanted to help La Soupe by using algorithms and mapping to create more effective routes for volunteers to take when picking up or dropping off food,” says Maria Pressel, a UC Sophomore working on La Soupe’s consulting team. More than sixty of said volunteers — or the “Bucket Brigade” as DeYoung calls them — haul food waste to La Soupe chefs and then bring the soup on to hungry mouths. Since pickup and delivery is half the battle, they found that their routes and strategies were inefficient, so Pressel and her team’s efforts are helping La Soup save precious time and money.
for La Soupe, it’s an elimination game. Eliminate waste and eliminate hunger. "We're the last stop," Director DeYoung says. "If it's usable, we use it. I never looked at it as disposable.” For executive chef Jason Louda, it’s about taste and style. Louda is somewhat of a local celebrity, working as a master chef at Meatball kitchen and cooking at various events. Cooking for La Soupe is a little different than Louda has done — the job requires making large batches of food that needs to be transportable and sometimes working with food that isn’t always perfect. “I want to use everything I can, but I want to make it taste good and look good for these people who don’t always get a gourmet meal,” Chef Louda says.
Although DeYoung is no longer cooking professionally, the culinary arts are in her blood. She refers to the love of cooking as a “genetic family disorder.” Her father, Pierre Adrian, brought the fine dining restaurant The Maisonette to Cincinnati, the city’s first Mobil five-star rating to Cincinnati. Her maternal grandfather, Albert Schmidt, was head chef at the Union Club in New York City. Another grandfather, Theo Kieffer was the Chef of the Sherry Netherland in New York City. Following family tradition, DeYoung worked her way up in many iconic Cincinnati restaurants. After a year in France, working as a cook in the Michelin 3 star La Gavroche London and L’Auberge d’Ill in Alsace, DeYoung decided it was time to spread her wings, creating her own French cuisine restaurant with her sister as an homage to their father.
What DeYoung ended up creating was something her father was sure to be proud of. The legacy of Suzy DeYoung and her culinary family will surely live on through the great organization that is La Soupe— a culinary effort far more impactful than any for-profit restaurant could ever be.