BALTIMORE — Brandon Phillips opened up The La Chow, a ghost kitchen, about a year ago.
Most people know it as a place where chefs who don’t have restaurant-sized kitchens can prepare their food.
What they don’t know is that La Chow is also a place where Phillips collects thousands of food items to give away free groceries.
He says he is passionate about giving back to people.
“I always see that there is a need for something, and I’ve been blessed to be able to give back, so we try to align with people that do the same thing, and we try to give back as much as we can," says Brandon Phillips.
Some of the people he has aligned with recently have given his grocery giveaways national attention, including celebrities like rappers Young Jeezy and Offset, just to name a few.
“Celebrities do have a huge platform, and usually it’s always around something negative, so if we can leverage our friendships to bring something positive to the community, why not?" says Phillips.
Both celebrities are helping out this month by giving away groceries and connecting with the community.
In partnership with La Chow and DTLR, rapper Offset made a surprise visit on Tuesday to students at Dunbar High School.
Giving away over $30,000 worth of groceries.
“The celebrities that we do partner with have a real need for giving. It's not that we’re forcing them to or we're asking them to. They are passionate about the things that we are doing, too. So, we’re all aligned," Phillips says.
Brandon says the groceries they gave out Tuesday are only a fraction of what they give away.
“On our Saturdays, we usually give away about $350,000 to half a million dollars," he says.
La Chow is preparing for Saturday, storing mountains of food and still accepting donations.
“Groceries get stored here. They come from everywhere, from Virginia from different states, and they come here to Baltimore to store them here and make sure they are refrigerated and their temperatures are kept right. And then we actually have our teams come in in the morning, we get them set up in bags, and we set up our little stations; it’s like maybe a three- or four-hour process before each giveaway," he says.
“Our goal is for it to grow all the way across the country, not just the country, the world, so we want to feed as many people as we possibly can," says Phillips.
The next grocery giveaway is Saturday, March 16th, at 210 South Central Avenue, Baltimore, MD, starting at 11 a.m, In partnership with StatDC.
Click here if you would like to volunteer or are in need of groceries.
