Second Harvest of Central Florida can cater your Christmas. Here’s how

Christmas orders are due by Dec. 16

Photo of Second Harvest's Culinary Training Program (Costa Communications)

You can support a cause and have your Christmas celebration catered, all through Second Harvest of Central Florida’s Catering for Good program.

Christmas orders must be in by Dec. 16 and can then be picked up on Christmas Eve. Catering for Good is also offering New Year’s catering. Those orders must be made by Dec. 23 with pick up on Dec. 31.

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All of the money raised through the Catering for Good program goes back into Second Harvest’s Culinary Training Program, which offers free training for unemployed or under-employed individuals — giving them experience and job placement inside commercial kitchens in Central Florida.

“We’ve just had great success with that program. It truly is life-changing for our students,” said Nancy Brumbaugh, vice president of food service for Second Harvest.

Students from the program also help in preparing the catering orders filled by Catering for Good, though a team of seven trained chefs are in charge of the final food preparation.

“It also offers our students the experience to work in a catering department and they do that when they reach to tier three of our programs. So they’ve already learned all the basics of cookery,” Brumbaugh said. “It’s important that they have the knowledge of how a catering company works and it also gives me the experience of the push, the urgency that you need and real-world experience when you get into food service.”

Christmas orders must be in by Dec. 16 and can then be picked up on Christmas Eve. To place an order, click here.

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In addition to Catering for Good — which also operates year-round, not just during the holidays — the culinary training program also receives funding through sales of products sold under Second Harvest’s A Spoon Full of Hope product line.

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“It has a delicious tomato basil soup that was developed by one of our chefs. We also have three local [kinds of] honey that are available and we have delicious shortbread cookies that are also made in-house by our chefs and some of our graduate students help prepare these cookies,” Brumbaugh said.

A Spoon Full of Hope products available for sale (Costa Communications)

Second Harvest is selling holiday gift sets with items from the A Spoon Full of Hope product line. Those can be found by clicking here.

Links to volunteer or donate to Second Harvest can be found by clicking here.