Community Lunch with Gabriel Arvizu of ARV Sweets

Build community, break bread, and come on down to Community Lunch at Coffey Park. Each Pioneer Works Community Lunch invites a local chef to prepare a menu of locally-grown food offered free of charge to our Red Hook and neighboring communities.

Community Lunch was created to build community across identities with a priority focus on the residents who have been taking care, organizing, and holding down Red Hook for many years. Its fabric is made up of predominantly Black, Latinx, and Chinese residents in the neighboring NYCHA housing.

This event aims to work alongside and learn from the local organizations that have implemented solutions to food insecurity in an area that’s largely considered a food desert. We aim to contribute to their existing efforts aimed at achieving food sovereignty.

Everyone is welcome! We kindly ask you to take care when pulling up. Wait to get in line, introduce yourself to a stranger, make your neighbor a plate, and make space so there’s room for everybody.

Presented by Pioneer Works in partnership with FIG and organized by FIG member business 1:1 Foods, featuring local produce sourced from Red Hook Farms, working towards common goals of community empowerment, food security and supporting Red Hook’s local food economy.

About Gabriel Arvizu

Gabriel (he/him) has been cooking, baking, and running kitchens for as long as he can remember. Born in Mexico City and proudly raised and still residing in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, he has worked for years in the Brooklyn food scene, in management roles for Hana Kitchens, Jianbing Company, and ARV Sweets. His family-run business, ARV Sweets, is a Brooklyn-based bakery with a Mexican soul, crafting baked goods in small batches based on family recipes with Mexican ingredients like tamarind, guajillo peppers and piloncillo. Learn more at arvsweets.co, @arvsweets, and @gabriel_arv.

About FIG

FIG is a grassroots collective of people working to transform the food system from within by stewarding, supporting, and connecting equitable and sustainable food work across New York / Lenapehoking, fostering collaboration and resource exchange. FIG facilitates workers within the food system coming together to study the systemic barriers to equity, justice, and sustainability and explore creative solutions; The diverse network of rich relationships that FIG cultivates, shares, knowledge and resources and mobilizes for and  collective action. By boosting capacity and building critical bridges between the food world and social healing/justice organizing led by frontline community organizations, FIG is creating the conditions for a community-controlled regenerative and solidarity based food system. Ongoing initiatives include FIG Food Security Program, a collaboratively-run free fresh produce and prepared foods program built in partnership with community organizations, farmers and independent food businesses; FIG Study Group, a monthly gathering for political education and relationship building for food workers, founded in 2014; and Trans Liberation Kitchen, an innovative food justice program designed to feed and empower trans organizers and communities, launching summer 2022. Learn more about FIG.

About 1:1 Foods

1:1 Foods is a culinary social enterprise dedicated to community-led food justice in Brooklyn. Their seasoned F&B team provides boutique drop-off and full-service catering services, and runs collaborative events across the borough, with an emphasis on building deep relationships with local chefs, farms and restaurant partners. Through resource-generating work, 1:1 Foods re-invests 100% of its profits to support grassroots food justice efforts, including the FIG Food Security Program, which delivers fresh produce and prepared foods to New Yorkers on the frontlines of fighting food apartheid. 1:1 Foods also dedicates compensated labor and in-kind culinary resources to their community, offering culinary services and operational support at low-to-no cost to FIG FSP and other local grassroots organizations committed to transforming the food system. During the summer and fall of 2022, in partnership with Brooklyn Grange’s Sunset Park rooftop farm, 1:1 Foods will produce Roof Stoop Sundays, a food-and-drink event series that celebrates the bounty of the growing season, highlighting the deep talent of local chefs, and raising funds and awareness for FIG and the greater New York City good food ecosystem. Learn more about 1:1 Foods.

About Red Hook Farms

Red Hook Farms is a youth-­centered urban farming and food justice program in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Red Hook Farms creates opportunities for teens to expand their knowledge base, develop their leadership skills, and positively engage with each other, their community, and the environment. Red Hook Farms operates two urban farm sites, and programs include a teen farm apprenticeship, three weekly farm stands, a CSA, and a school workshop program. Since 2001, Red Hook Farms has strived to transform vacant lands into vibrant urban farms, improve access to healthy, affordable produce, and nurture a new generation of green leaders. Formerly known as Added Value, Red Hook Farms became a project of Red Hook Initiative in November 2018. Red Hook Initiative (RHI) is a community-based nonprofit serving over 5,000 Red Hook NYCHA residents annually through a model of youth development, community building, and community hiring. Learn more about Red Hook Farms.

Community Lunch is made possible by Nissan.