Letter from the Executive Director

It's good to be back! 2022 certainly felt like a year of hopeful return and re-engagement with one another after the pandemic. Many of us were able to resume activities and work, even as we came to accept that many things were going to be different moving forward.

In the food system and hospitality industry, pandemic-born challenges exposed deep and troubling issues, and laid them bare to a wide and public audience. Direct requests to our community kitchen partners for trained employees went through the roof during the pandemic and have not abated. On one level, this extreme need for skilled employees in restaurants and other culinary settings has given expanded visibility and respect to the training programs we support. They have gained influence and increased power as they appeal for positive changes in workplace environments and improved career pipelines for those that face barriers to employment, such as previous incarceration, homelessness, and substance-abuse.

Now more than ever, it is obvious that these organizations and programs are doing extremely valuable work every day as they help their participants gain skills, develop a sense of purpose, and take steps to improve their lives and careers through culinary arts education.

With your support in 2022, the JPF continued to contribute educational materials, technical videos, and much-needed funding to locally based community culinary training programs. Programs that, in just a few short weeks, train individuals about large-scale meal preparation and serving, food safety, and the functioning of a professional kitchen, so they can become valued team members in a market desperate for workers. It is easy to understand the value of this work. People who want to work gain skills, a sense of purpose and better health, and our beloved food service industry gains workers.

In 2022, the JPF had a banner year, full of success stories and milestones. We were back in person for our 5th Anniversary Gala in April; we surpassed $1M in distributed grants to community kitchen partners; and Jacques visited and instructed classes (which we captured on film) at two great community kitchens grantee partners: Hot Bread Kitchen in NYC and Community Servings in Boston. The JPF expanded our commitment to support the Catalyst Kitchens Network of over 100 community kitchens nationwide, and we will participate in the Catalyst Kitchens Annual Conference this summer. The JPF continues to produce videos of Jacques' “Cooking at Home” series and is working to repackage older videos from his PBS series. We continue to produce videos of celebrity chef friends and notable newcomers in Cook with Jacques Pépin & Friends” Video Recipe Book, now approaching 200 videos! Our JPF Membership Program continues to prosper, giving every single JPF Member the chance to expand their own culinary techniques while supporting the culinary education of so many others.

In 2023, we will continue to provide grants and curricular materials. We will continue to protect and extend Jacques' incredible legacy as a chef, educator, and mentor. We will continue to give back to you through social media and our website videos of recipes and techniques. We will enlist more culinary professionals to carry this important and essential torch, spreading the word and helping to expand opportunities for culinary education and training.

We thank you so very much for your support and encourage you to reach out to us with any thoughts, questions, or suggestions you might have regarding our work.

Very Best Regards,


Rollie Wesen, Executive Director

2022 Annual Report Featured Partner

Pathlight HOME

Pathlight HOME was a recipient of the JPF 2021 and 2022 grants program. For over 30 years, the organization has provided affordable housing solutions for homeless men and women in Central Florida, using an innovative “Housing First” model. This model operates on the belief that providing a permanent home is the essential first step in ending homelessness. Having a safe place to live provides the stability a person needs to address other obstacles in their life such as addiction, joblessness, or mental illness.

As a grassroots organization founded by a minister and a lawyer, Pathlight HOME turns abandoned motel properties into comfortable, single-room occupancy units, allowing the organization to save on construction costs and get people into housing quickly.

Since its inception, the organization has evolved to provide personalized support and career training opportunities to help individuals achieve stability, and ultimately self-sufficiency.  Its core programs and services include permanent and affordable housing, career training, a community resource center and several social enterprises.

The Pathlight HOME Culinary Training Program is a free, eight-week culinary training program that includes hands-on cooking classes, classroom instruction, field trips, individual coaching, and a food handler certification. Each culinary class has a limited number of students to keep instruction individualized and personal. Students learn from a team of executive chefs in a modern 13,000 square foot kitchen and gain real-world experience by assisting at the organization's social enterprise cafe Sobik's Subs. Students also receive training in banquet and dining room skills, espresso and barista training, and bakery skills, giving them career opportunities in both the culinary and hospitality sectors.

In 2021, the JPF's funding helped the organization hire a Culinary Employment Coordinator to help identify and cultivate new employer partners and increase employment retention. In 2022, JPF funding provided general program support, including the purchase of food and supplies. Since 2014, the culinary program's success has led to program graduates securing jobs with nearby resorts, hotels, and other culinary industry employment partners.

The JPF is proud to partner with Pathlight HOME's compassionate, nimble, and innovative program.

Gloria Pépin Memorial Grant

Sarah Wolf, an alumna of the Fresh Starts Academy of Homeward Bound of Marin in Novato, CA, was the recipient of the 2022 Gloria Pépin Memorial Grant, an annual $5,000 award to an outstanding female graduate of a JPF-funded organization.

Here's what members of the Open Door Team had to say about Sarah in the application:

“Sarah's zest for all things culinary include helping in the kitchen at Ronald McDonald House and working on a non-profit organic farm deeply entrenched in community service. Sarah was an attentive and inquisitive student with a passion for food and education. She was an active and vocal participant in our classroom and kitchen time, and she loved helping others.” — Chef Andrew Wild, Culinary Training Specialist, Fresh Starts Academy, Homeward Bound

In Sarah's own words:

“At Fresh Starts Culinary Academy, I embraced the idea that cooking is a path to self-reliance. The Gloria Pépin Memorial Grant will enable me to further my studies in the culinary arts field and forge my path towards using food to improve lives within our community. Ultimately, I see myself in a community kitchen, preparing meals with fresh, locally-sourced ingredients, from a repertoire of multi-cultural palates, while teaching and empowering people to grow and prepare their own food, following farm-to-table, sustainable practices. My dream is to use my passion for food to help others and to create and strengthen community.”

The Foundation applauds Sarah Wolfe for her personal growth and congratulates the Fresh Starts Academy for their fantastic work supporting individuals like Sarah.

The Fresh Starts Culinary Academy is Homeward Bound's job training program for people facing pressing poverty and homelessness in Marin County. The 10-week training course serves about 60 students a year.

Fresh Starts Culinary Academy has been designed for students to build skills in two Homeward Bound kitchens with the added opportunity to work at Fresh Starts Chef Events, a series of celebrity chef dinners produced by Homeward Bound.


The team also produces Wagster Treats dog biscuits, chocolate Halo Truffles, and Halo HomeMades, a sister line of jams and salsas.

In 2021, funding from the JPF helped the organization shift their training practices during COVID-19 so that more students were placed in paid jobs working on hunger relief efforts in the community. In addition to offering expanded employment in their own kitchens (with an extra boost in weekly pay for working on the front lines during the health crisis), Homeward Bound offered additional support and resources to alumni of their program who had lost jobs due to the pandemic.

In 2022, funding from the JPF helped strengthen their curriculum and expand employer relationships by adding five new partnerships. Students in the 10-week program participate in classroom sessions on professional development and personal finance. Uniforms and kitchen-approved shoes are provided at no charge for the participants and trainees that complete the program receive a $1,000 bonus.

Revenue Generation

In 2022, the JPF was able to return to many of the activities that we had created prior to the pandemic. Our annual gala, celebrating our fifth anniversary, was an extraordinary success, as well as a welcome reunion of our friends and JPF family. Other events and appearances including the Greenwich Wine and Food Festival, the Texas Book Festival, and the Holiday Dinner at Stone Acres Farm, generated strong receipts.

The tools we created during the pandemic continued to reap benefits and support our grants program. The JPF Membership continues to thrive. We ran a focused new member campaign in October and we continue to see excellent renewal rates with our current subscribers. Our Rouxbe.com online course, Jacques Pépin: A Legacy of Technique, receives strikingly positive reviews from every participant. We hope to inspire more fans and aspiring cooks of all ages to enroll in this online offering. Our ecommerce marketplace, through Shopify, offers affordable prints of Jacques' artwork, and this year's holiday gift option, a JPF Membership paired with a puzzle image of Jacques’ iconic pot wall, was well-received.

A new revenue line for the JPF is the licensing of the Cooking at Home videos to PBS partners KQED and WNET. Jacques began shooting these videos during the pandemic, now numbering well over 200, and the JPF rallied to build a team and to complete the post-production. This licensing to the sanctioned YouTube channels hosted by these two PBS stations is the first monetary return on investment we have seen.

As always, it is our loyal, generous supporters, and members of our JPF family, that provide the lion's share of sustaining revenue. We thank you all for your continuing generosity and support.

Programs and Expenses

In 2022, we continued our granting program in support of culinary education through community-based culinary training programs across the country, funding 20 grant proposals, and clearing a milestone of more than $1,000,000 dispersed in grants, since our inception. We were pleased to be able to fund the newly independent Catalyst Kitchens (CK) Network, that serves nearly 100 of these community kitchens across the country with consulting, support services, best practices, and curricula. We look forward to working with the CK Network in a sustained way as they continue to grow. We engaged in new efforts to support community kitchens, and the network as a whole, by partnering with Hot Bread Kitchen and Community Servings to teach directly to their students. Jacques' recipes, demonstrations and other captured content will eventually be part of a community kitchen specific website which we plan to build in 2023.

Other support for our community kitchen partners in 2022 included small wares donated by OXO, and logoed-aprons from ChefWorks for each culinary graduate of a JPF grantee program.

Behind the scenes, in 2022, we invested in structural protections and safeguards for our web assets, to keep our JPF family safe. We worked two remove fraudulent accounts across multiple social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Throughout 2022, Jacques kept shooting videos in his home, and we kept producing them for distribution on social media and other outlets. We expanded our members-only Video Recipe Book with a 4th volume, this year being released as one new video per week, via our members' weekly newsletter. We also began work on an exciting new project, a master catalog of all of Jacques' recipes, from every cookbook, and video he has produced and published. This kind of database, associated with an individual chef educator, is unique in the culinary world and helps showcase Jacques' astonishing breadth of work.

Looking forward to 2023, we continue to plan strategically for our 5-, 10- and 20-year horizons. We plan to build a team of culinary expertise that will facilitate our continuing commitment to culinary education, and the furthering of Jacques' legacy.