Tell us about your organization and who you serve
Rethink Food is a chef-led nonprofit on a mission to fix our broken food system by creating a more equitable and sustainable future. We partner with restaurants, community organizations, and food donors to deliver meals where they're needed most. Through our Sustainable Community Kitchen, we set the standard for dignified, community-centered food access, while advocating for systemic change to ensure a fair and sustainable food future for all. Since our founding in 2017, we have provided over 34 million healthy meals and invested $150 million into communities in New York City and across the country. Together, we're rethinking how food can nourish communities and drive lasting impact.
Our chef-led model distinguishes us from traditional food assistance programs. We partner with a network of over 100 restaurants nationwide, transforming their culinary expertise into a community asset. These partnerships allow us to offer restaurant-quality meals that reflect the rich cultural diversity of the communities we serve—from Caribbean and Latin American cuisines to Asian, Middle Eastern, and soul food traditions. Notably, we are currently the only provider of halal medically tailored meals in New York State, ensuring that our impact extends across NYC's diverse Muslim communities while meeting both religious dietary requirements and medical nutrition therapy guidelines. We serve neighborhoods across all five cities, with a particular focus on communities experiencing the highest rates of food insecurity and diet-related chronic disease.
Food as Medicine has long been integral to our work, but over the past year, it has become a more explicit focus. We believe all people deserve delicious, healthy, high-quality meals regardless of their circumstances. State funding through the 1115 Medicaid waiver has enabled us to provide nutritious, culturally appropriate meals to Medicaid-eligible clients at no cost. As a result, we are actively expanding our Food as Medicine initiatives, building on our foundation of dignity-centered food access to address the intersection of nutrition security and health equity.
How do you define Food is Medicine, and why?
At Rethink, we believe that everyone deserves access to nutritious, delicious, and dignified meals that speak to their unique cultural and lived experiences. We define Food is Medicine as an approach that recognizes food as a critical intervention for preventing and managing chronic disease—one that honors the deep connection between what we eat daily and our long-term health outcomes.
Our definition is grounded in three core principles. First, we believe that medically tailored nutrition must be delivered with dignity. Too often, food assistance programs inadvertently perpetuate stigma through the provision of institutional-quality meals or limited food choices. We reject this approach. Our meals are chef-prepared, culturally resonant, and indistinguishable from what anyone would be proud to serve at their own table. Second, we recognize that medical efficacy cannot be separated from cultural appropriateness. A low-sodium meal plan means nothing if the food is unfamiliar or unappetizing to the person receiving it. We work closely with our diverse set of restaurant partners to ensure that dietary restrictions are met within the context of the cuisines people know and love—whether that's reducing sodium in Caribbean stews or creating diabetic-friendly versions of halal staples. Third, we view Food is Medicine not as charity, but as healthcare infrastructure. Just as we wouldn't question whether someone "deserves" blood pressure medication, we shouldn't question whether someone deserves the nutritious food that can lower their blood pressure or prevent hospital readmissions.
This framing matters because it shifts the conversation from food insecurity to nutrition security, from emergency response to preventive care, and from cost centers to cost savings. When we treat food as medicine, we acknowledge what healthcare systems are increasingly recognizing: that addressing social determinants of health, particularly nutrition, can reduce healthcare utilization, improve patient outcomes, and ultimately save money. More importantly, it can improve quality of life and health equity for the communities that have been most underserved by both our food system and our healthcare system.
What kind of Food is Medicine program do you implement?
We work alongside our restaurant partners to provide medically tailored meals (MTMs) for Medicaid-eligible recipients across New York City and Long Island through New York State's 1115 Medicaid waiver program. The program serves individuals managing chronic conditions including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and obesity—conditions that are both highly prevalent in the communities we serve and highly responsive to nutritional intervention.
Clients are referred to our program through social care networks (SCNs), community-based organizations, and healthcare providers. Eligibility is determined based on Medicaid enrollment and a qualifying chronic condition diagnosis. Once enrolled, participants receive up to 21 chef-curated, dietitian-approved meals per week, delivered directly to their door at no cost. The program lasts for up to six months, providing consistent nutritional support during critical periods such as post-hospitalization recovery, during active disease management, postpartum, or when establishing new healthy eating patterns.
Each meal is tailored to meet specific medical nutrition therapy guidelines. For clients with diabetes, we focus on blood sugar management through a balanced macronutrient approach and controlled carbohydrate portions. For individuals with hypertension or heart disease, we limit sodium while enhancing flavor through the use of herbs, spices, and culinary techniques. For clients managing multiple conditions, our dietitians work with our culinary team to create meals that meet overlapping dietary restrictions without compromising taste or cultural relevance.
What makes our approach unique is the integration of culinary excellence with clinical nutrition. Our restaurant partners receive extensive training on medical nutrition therapy guidelines, food safety protocols for medically vulnerable populations, and culturally responsive meal preparation. Each week's menu reflects seasonal availability, celebrates diverse culinary traditions, and maintains the chef-driven quality that defines our organization. Clients receive meals from cuisines that resonate with their backgrounds—whether that's jerk chicken adapted for low-sodium diets, diabetic-friendly mofongo, or heart-healthy versions of traditional Asian dishes.
Beyond meal delivery, we provide nutrition education materials in multiple languages. These recipe cards allow clients to recreate healthy versions of the meals they've enjoyed, and provide access to our client support team for questions about meal preferences, dietary needs, or delivery logistics. We also connect clients with our partner community organizations for wraparound services, including access to food pantries, healthcare navigation, and social services—recognizing that sustainable health outcomes require addressing multiple social determinants simultaneously.
How is your Food is Medicine work funded? What's your outlook on continuing that work?
Our Food is Medicine program is currently funded through New York State's 1115 Medicaid waiver demonstration project, which allocated significant resources for community-based organizations to provide supportive services to Medicaid beneficiaries. This funding represents a groundbreaking recognition by the state that investing in nutrition can reduce healthcare costs and improve outcomes for people managing chronic conditions.
While the pilot program is scheduled to conclude in early 2027, we are actively working to ensure the sustainability and expansion of this model beyond the demonstration period. Our strategy is multifaceted.
First, we are cultivating relationships with managed care organizations, hospital systems, and social care networks that have both the financial incentive and the infrastructure to continue funding medically tailored meal programs. Under value-based care models, these entities benefit directly from interventions that keep patients healthier and reduce the need for hospitalization. We are positioning ourselves as a turnkey solution. We’re an organization with proven operational capacity, an established restaurant network, and a track record of dignified, culturally responsive service delivery.
Second, we are engaging in policy advocacy at the state and federal levels. We are working with coalitions of Food is Medicine providers and healthcare advocates to make the case for sustained Medicaid coverage of medically tailored meals, either through permanent state plan amendments or through expanded coverage under federal guidelines. The growing body of research showing the cost-effectiveness of these interventions strengthens our advocacy position.
We are also exploring diversified revenue streams, including philanthropic funding designated explicitly for Food is Medicine work, social impact investments, and partnerships with employers and health plans in the private market. Our long-term vision is to establish medically tailored meals as a standard covered benefit, as routine and unremarkable as physical therapy or diabetes education.
Our outlook is cautiously optimistic. While the end of the demonstration period creates uncertainty, it also creates urgency among stakeholders to preserve programs that are working. We have invested heavily in building operational excellence, cultivating partnerships, and demonstrating impact precisely because we believe this work must continue. The question is not whether food should be part of healthcare, but rather how quickly our healthcare financing systems will catch up to what communities have always known: that good food is foundational for good health.
What metrics or outcomes do you track? Is that tracking a challenge, and what would make it easier? Have you seen improvements in what you do track?
As a relatively new entrant to the formal Food is Medicine space, we are building our outcomes measurement infrastructure deliberately and strategically. Currently, we track several categories of metrics that capture both program operations and participant experience.
On the operational side, we monitor meal delivery success rates, client retention rates throughout the six-month enrollment period, meal completion rates (what percentage of meals are actually consumed), and adherence to medical nutrition therapy guidelines in our menu development. We also track the diversity of our offerings—ensuring that we're providing culturally appropriate options across multiple cuisine types each week—and partner restaurant compliance with food safety and nutrition standards.
On the participant experience side, we conduct regular satisfaction surveys, collect qualitative feedback through client interviews, and track reasons for program discontinuation when participants leave before completing the full six months. We pay particular attention to feedback about meal quality, cultural appropriateness, portion sizes, variety, and the dignity of the delivery experience. This feedback has been invaluable.
Where we face challenges—and where we see the greatest opportunity for growth—is in tracking health outcomes. Ideally, we would be measuring changes in biometric indicators (A1C levels for diabetic clients, blood pressure readings, BMI, cholesterol levels), healthcare utilization patterns (hospital readmissions, ED visits, primary care engagement), and patient-reported outcomes (energy levels, ability to manage their condition, quality of life). However, accessing this data requires partnerships with healthcare systems and managed care organizations that have the infrastructure to share protected health information compliantly and the analytic capacity to link meal provision with health outcomes.
We would like to build these data-sharing partnerships, but they take time to negotiate and implement. HIPAA compliance, data use agreements, technical integration between our systems and electronic health records—these are non-trivial challenges, especially for a community-based organization without a large IT department. What would make this easier is standardized protocols for Food is Medicine outcome measurement, technical assistance in building data infrastructure, and funding specifically designated for evaluation (which is often overlooked in program budgets).
That said, we are already seeing promising signals. Looking ahead, we plan to partner with academic researchers to conduct more formal evaluation, participate in multi-site studies that can demonstrate the effectiveness of medically tailored meals across different contexts, and contribute to the growing evidence base that food is not just a social service but a legitimate healthcare intervention.
What are the top three lessons you've learned along the way?
This work takes time and investment to do well—and it's worth it. We began investing in training our restaurant network over a year before we started delivering our first medically tailored meal, and even then, the ramp-up took longer than we anticipated. Chefs who excel at creating delicious food for restaurant customers needed new skills: understanding medical nutrition therapy guidelines, calculating sodium and macronutrient content, adapting recipes without sacrificing flavor, and maintaining strict food safety protocols for immunocompromised populations. We developed comprehensive training curricula, provided ongoing technical assistance, and created nutrition resource guides. Some restaurant partners needed three to six months of support before they were confident in producing compliant meals consistently. This investment was essential. You simply cannot deliver effective Food is Medicine without culinary excellence married to clinical precision. The lesson: don't rush this work. Build strong foundations, invest in your partners, and recognize that quality takes time to develop and maintain.
Building relationships is key—and reciprocity matters. We've been fortunate to connect with organizations that have deep experience in the Food is Medicine field, including Community Servings in Boston, Project Open Hand in San Francisco, and local New York organizations like God's Love We Deliver. These relationships have been transformative. They've shared operational best practices, introduced us to research partners, warned us about common pitfalls, and celebrated our successes. We've learned about meal packaging that maintains food safety during transport, client communication strategies that build trust, and how to navigate the complexities of Medicaid billing. But these relationships only worked because we approached them with humility and a spirit of reciprocity—we're not just extracting knowledge, we're contributing our unique perspective as a chef-led, restaurant-partnered organization. We're sharing what we're learning about scaling culturally diverse menus and engaging non-traditional partners in Food is Medicine delivery. The lesson: this field is collaborative, not competitive. The need is too great for any one organization to address alone, and we all benefit when we learn from and support each other.
It's a continuous improvement process—and clients are our best teachers. We launched with what we thought was a well-designed program, and within the first month, client feedback prompted us to make significant adjustments. We found that some clients lacked reliable refrigeration or cooking equipment, requiring us to adjust our meal formats. We also learned powerful lessons about dignity and choice. Clients told us they valued follow-up calls that asked about their experience rather than just confirming delivery. Each piece of feedback has made our program stronger. We now have systems for rapid iteration based on what we hear, and we've built a culture where client voice drives our decision-making. The lesson: stay humble, stay curious, and never assume you have it all figured out. The people you serve are the experts on their own needs, and your job is to listen and adapt.
Do you want to keep doing Food is Medicine work? Has it enriched your organization's work?
Absolutely. Food is Medicine has become central to our vision for the future, and it has profoundly enriched and clarified our organizational mission in ways we didn't fully anticipate.
From our founding, Rethink Food has been driven by a belief that the food system is broken. Food is Medicine work has allowed us to operationalize this critique and demonstrate a better way forward. It has shown us that it's possible to deliver chef-quality, culturally resonant, medically appropriate meals at scale. It has been proven that restaurants can be healthcare partners, that culinary excellence and clinical nutrition are not mutually exclusive, and that investing in dignified food access yields measurable health and economic benefits.
The impact on our organization has been significant. It has sharpened our operational systems, elevated our quality standards, and deepened our relationships with both the restaurant community and the healthcare sector. It has opened doors to new partnerships with hospitals, social care networks, and public health agencies that see us as a solution to challenges they've struggled to address through traditional healthcare channels. It has also strengthened our advocacy work—when we talk about the need for food system reform and sustainable funding for food access programs, we can now point to concrete evidence of what's possible when we invest in food as healthcare infrastructure.
Perhaps most importantly, this work has reinforced our commitment to dignity. When clients tell us that receiving our meals is the first time they've felt respected by a social service program, or when they say that it's restored their joy in eating, or when healthcare providers tell us that our program succeeded with patients who had failed previous interventions—these moments validate everything we believe about the power of approaching food access with culinary excellence, cultural humility, and genuine respect for the people we serve.
Looking ahead, we see a tremendous opportunity to scale this model. We envision expanding to serve more chronic conditions, partnering with healthcare systems across the region, and demonstrating that the Rethink Food approach can be replicated in other cities. We want to be part of the movement that makes medically tailored meals a standard healthcare benefit, covered by insurance, and available to everyone who needs them. We also see opportunities to contribute to the broader Food is Medicine ecosystem by training other organizations in our model, sharing what we've learned about culturally responsive programming, and advocating for policies that support both community-based food organizations and the restaurant industry.
Within three to five years, we aim to be serving thousands of clients, collaborating with hundreds of restaurant partners, and contributing to a growing body of evidence that food is not merely ancillary to healthcare, but is integral to healthcare. We hope to have influenced how managed care organizations, hospitals, and policymakers think about nutrition security, and to have demonstrated that investing in dignified, high-quality food access is not only the right thing to do, but also the economically smart thing to do.
This work has enriched our organization by giving us a clear, measurable way to advance our mission. It has connected us to new communities, new partners, and new sources of support. It has challenged us to grow operationally and strategically. And most of all, it has given us hope—hope that our broken food system can be fixed, one delicious, medically tailored, dignified meal at a time.