{"id":8551,"date":"2025-10-16T21:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/8551\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T21:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:38:07","slug":"marthas-kitchen-moves-into-bigger-facility-in-san-jose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/8551\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha’s Kitchen moves into bigger facility in San Jose"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was sort of strange to be celebrating the expansion of Martha\u2019s Kitchen<\/a> on Wednesday at the ribbon-cutting for the nonprofit\u2019s new, larger facility on Story Road. After all, it\u2019s not actually good news that food insecurity has become so bad that Martha\u2019s Kitchen outgrew its headquarters on Willow Street long ago.<\/p>\n

Last year, Martha\u2019s Kitchen provided 2.4 million meals to people in five California counties, working with a network of more than 60 partner groups. Executive Director Bill Lee says that when the new multi-use facility\u2019s kitchen is built out, it\u2019ll be able to produce 7 million meals a year. Let\u2019s hope the day that figure is required never arrives.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite all our efforts, food insecurity continues to rise in our backyard,\u201d Lee said. \u201cWith this new location, we will be able to meet that ever increasing need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Martha'sMartha’s Kitchen Executive Director Bill Lee shows Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong the space where the nonprofit will build out a new kitchen at its facility on Story Road in San Jose on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (Sal Pizarro\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Martha\u2019s Kitchen, which was founded in 1981, purchased the building at 749 Story Road for $7.5 million this summer<\/a> and started serving meals there in September. Now that it\u2019s in the new facility, Martha\u2019s Kitchen is working to raise funds to cover the purchase as well as an additional $3 million to $5 million to design and construct the commercial kitchen.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit ConXion to Community, which was founded in 1977 as the Center for Training & Careers, sold the building but will be leasing back part of the space for 10 years. Lee said an additional 2,220 square-foot office space with its own lobby and entrance is also available for lease.<\/p>\n

A large crowd showed up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours of the new facility, including San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, San Jose City Councilmembers Bien Doan and David Cohen, Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong, Hollister City Councilmember Dolores Morales, Santa Clara Family Health Plan CEO Christine Tomcala and Drew Starbird, a professor of information systems and analytics at Santa Clara University, who produced the Hunger Index tracking food insecurity in Santa Clara County by zip code.<\/p>\n

Mahan said the work that the staff and volunteers at Martha\u2019s Kitchen do helps San Jose have a soul.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of big cities feel very immersible, very fast and scary and disconnected, but not San Jose,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re the smallest big city in the country and it\u2019s because of institutions like Martha\u2019s Kitchen \u2014 and community members and networks like the one in this room \u2014 who really deeply care and want to see everybody in our city treated with dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

ORCHARD CITY BREWS: It\u2019s Oktoberfest weekend in Campbell, with the 30th annual celebration filling Campbell Avenue on Saturday and Sunday. That means lots of bratwurst, plenty of beer and traditional and nontraditional tunes from the Zicke Zacke Band.<\/p>\n

It also means a lot of traffic and parking headaches around downtown Campbell, but there\u2019s no reason to get your lederhosen in a twist. Corinthian Transportation is providing a free shuttle to-and-from the festival from the Pruneyard parking garage. That doesn\u2019t excuse anyone from having a designated driver, though.<\/p>\n

Get all the details for the weekend \u2014 and prepurchase drink tickets \u2014 at www.campbelloktoberfest.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE: If you were at the Hammer Theatre Center in downtown San Jose on Wednesday, you might be able to say \u201cI saw them back when\u201d about the four recipients of the Leigh Weimers Emerging Artists Awards<\/a>: songwriter and musician William Johnston; actor and singer Lauren Berling; opera singer Deborah Mart\u00ednez Rosengaus; and artist Bernadette Fahmy, who creates amazing \u201cpaintings\u201d with colored tissue paper.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there\u2019s another name associated with the Hammer that we\u2019ll soon have to say \u201cI knew him when\u201d: Chris Burrill announced Wednesday that he will be retiring as the venue\u2019s executive managing director at the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Burrill was hired by San Jose State in 2016 to manage the theater. I think he did a remarkable job in bringing the former San Jose Rep theater back to life with a combination of live theater and musical performances, along with popular video events like National Theater Live.<\/p>\n

CLIMATE FOR CHANGE: Works\/San Jose<\/a> will screen the film, \u201cUpstream, Downriver: Uniting for Water Justice,\u201d Saturday as part of a closing reception for its exhibition, \u201cClimate Interrelations Imaginative.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 12:30 p.m. event also will include a conversation with Cynthia Kaufman, author of \u201cThe Sea is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook,\u201d as well as a talk with exhibition artists Lisa Gass, Josie Lepe, Sarah Loyola, kaory santillan bueno and curator Valentino Loyola. The gallery is inside Open San Jose at 38 S. Second St.<\/p>\n

\u2018NO KINGS\u2019 BUT \u2018YES PORT-A-POTTIES\u2019: Organizers of the \u201cNo Kings\u201d rally set for noon Saturday at San Jose\u2019s St. James Park \u2014 one of many planned in the Bay Area and nationwide \u2014 say that the crowd may be as big or bigger than the estimated 15,000 people who showed up in June.<\/p>\n

If you were there in June, you know it was almost impossible to hear the speakers unless you were right by the McKinley statue, so 50501 San Jose, which is partnering with Indivisible San Jose, is working on getting a better sound system and portable toilets. The group\u2019s GoFundMe campaign<\/a> has raised more than $9,000 for its expenses \u2014 mostly in donations of $100 or less. Gosh, guess all that talk about Antifa and George Soros money is a myth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was sort of strange to be celebrating the expansion of Martha\u2019s Kitchen on Wednesday at the ribbon-cutting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[417,184,7,181,23,100,419,5466,88,90,89,198,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-8551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-around-town","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-news-columnists","15":"tag-nonprofits","16":"tag-san-jose","17":"tag-san-jose-headlines","18":"tag-san-jose-news","19":"tag-santa-clara-county","20":"tag-south-bay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}