Healthy Food, Healthy Community: Meet the Women Chefs of Thelma’s Kitchen
“People that are struggling at every other point in their lives…to have food that is waiting for them gives them a moment to breathe. Just for that little bit of time, they can feel comforted.” ~ Natasha Bailey, Thelma’s Kitchen Head Chef
Natasha Bailey embraces the healing nature and community-building power of food as Head Chef at Thelma’s Kitchen, which launched in 2018 as a Reconciliation Services (RS) social venture and donate-what-you-can community cafe. At Thelma’s, every Box Lunch ordered helps provide social and mental health services and reduce food insecurity for Kansas City neighbors in need. Bailey joined the Thelma’s Kitchen team in April 2021, a year after the cafe transitioned from in-cafe dining to Box Lunch service due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thelma’s Kitchen Head Chef, Natasha Bailey
Under her leadership, Thelma’s continues to increase access to affordable, healthy food for thousands of hungry neighbors through Thelma’s Meal Distribution Program, which provides an average of 800 meals a month for food-insecure clients at RS and partnering agencies. Additionally, Bailey loves collaborating with local farmers including William Ko, founder of Go Green Acres, which provides nutrient-rich greens for the Kitchen, and Odd Bird Farm, which has donated different sausages and meats as well.
With previous experience as Chef at Eden Alley Restaurant, as Director of Sales and Marketing at Green Dirt Farm, and as the founder of her private catering business, Natasha’s Eatables, Bailey’s culinary practice is informed by bringing joy and building community through food. As a child, she spent summers in Mississippi with her grandparents and extended family and shared how these summers helped form her driving passions for food and community. “When I think back on food memories and what really sparked joy for me, I remember being a little girl in Mississippi and running around my great grandmother’s backyard. She had huge pecan trees, and we would gather all the nuts. My favorite thing was cracking them … I loved having to dig through them and the satisfaction of getting nuts out of their shells perfectly, so they wouldn’t crumble.”
Bailey also helped her grandfather, an avid hunter and gardener, deliver “Meals on Wheels” for community members during those summers, which was hugely impactful for her. She remembers how welcoming and happy people were to not only receive the meals but to see a young person. She recognized how the meals helped form relationships and bring joy to people’s day, and also the positive impacts of sitting together and sharing a meal. “It is so important for people to eat together at tables. It’s the first step in change.”
Like her ability to extract the perfect pecan, Bailey’s qualities of precision, attention to detail, creativity, her collaborative nature, her natural leadership abilities, and her problem-solving skills are ideally suited for her role as Head Chef at Thelma’s Kitchen. Her wide-ranging interests include home gardening, farming, raw foodism, and preparing delicious, high-nutrient foods that promote wellness and provide immediate benefits for people. Recently, Bailey was also accepted into the prestigious Les Dames d’Escoffier International, “a philanthropic organization of women leaders in the fields of food, fine beverage, and hospitality.”
Bailey credits her five children as key inspirations and motivators. “I think about my kids - how they have given me the drive to be better, to keep learning, to keep trying.” Among the many things she loves about being Head Chef at Thelma’s, Bailey said that feeling supported and being able to support her team - including her two Assistant Chefs, Natasha Ellington and Isha Jones - is at the top of the list. “To know that you’re supported, that’s something I really like about being here. I’m able to feel supported and then support my team so they want to come to work. And being a woman in the kitchen, it’s hard. So being able to give two women positions in the kitchen and enabling them to do what they love and feel comfortable is really a great thing.”
From left to right: Natasha Ellington, Isha Jones, Natasha Bailey, and Community Engagement Coordinator Mike Marcus
Bailey attended culinary school with Jones and met Ellington during the pandemic through Ellington’s culinary and advocacy initiative She Blazes, which Ellington describes as “a benefit dinner made up of exclusively black women chefs whose benefactors were specifically nonprofits whose target clients were so-called minorities.”
Ellington and Jones joined Bailey at Thelma’s in 2021, and the three women have formed an incredible bond. “What we have is a sisterhood, a super bond,” said Ellington. “I’ve never been supported so wholly in my entire career. We support each other culturally, mentally, and emotionally as chefs, mothers, spouses, women, and business owners. It’s sincerely all for one and one for all. This work experience will forever be unmatched.”
For Jones, helping people in the community and “getting to do it with two amazing ladies who know their stuff” as a team of women chefs is what she loves most about working at Thelma’s Kitchen. “This is the first place where I have worked and loved all the people I work with and actually enjoy coming to work. And the volunteers really make my day. I love helping them and they are so interested in what we do that it makes me smile.”
Thelma’s Kitchen is a nonprofit social venture operated by Reconciliation Services. If you are interested in volunteering at Thelma’s or in ordering Box Lunches for yourself or your next team gathering, let us know!