Brooklyn Heights needs new home for beloved Community Fridge

Young volunteers with The Service Collective fill the Brooklyn Heights Community Fridge with meals that they prepare. Photo courtesy of Andrea Kapner, who leads TSC’s ‘Fill the Fridge’ program.

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — The Brooklyn Heights Community Fridge sits inside its own little green “barn” on the sidewalk in front of the First Presbyterian Church at 124 Henry St., and is filled by locals with meals, intentional leftovers, canned food and baked goods. Anyone can give, and anyone can take.

Now, after more than four years in front of the church, the refrigerator needs a new home. Volunteers told the Brooklyn Eagle that the fridge is blocking a now-active driveway, and the church’s founding volunteers have moved out of the neighborhood, necessitating the change of venue.

Several promising alternate locations have fallen through, however. So with the clock ticking, groups (including The Service Collective and “Friends of the Fridge,” with the Brooklyn Heights Association) are hosting a “Community Town Hall Discussion” to brainstorm on a new location. The town hall will take place on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Plymouth Church, 75 Hicks St. in Brooklyn Heights.

Brooklyn Heights Community Fridge volunteers James and Caroline Koster have been involved with the project from the beginning. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

Pandemic over but the need continues

The Brooklyn Heights Community Fridge was plugged in on Oct. 3, 2021, as Brooklyn was still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, with an unemployment rate around 8%. It was a time when community refrigerators were popping up across New York, putting a soft edge on a hard city.

Darryahn Knight, founder of the nonprofit Downtown Friendly, had approached First Presbyterian’s Rev. Adriene Thorne (now the senior minister of Riverside Church in Manhattan) about the possibility of locating a community refrigerator there and providing power. Thorne polled residents on the neighborhood social media site Nextdoor, and the response was overwhelming, according to the publication Presbyterians Today.

Heights resident Caroline Koster had also been mulling the idea of a community refrigerator “after speaking with a man named Doug” who was handing out expired but still-good food on Court Street, she told the Eagle.

“When I asked how I could help, he said he needed a refrigerator,” Koster said. After she saw Thorne’s post on Nextdoor, it all came together. “The like minds found each other—we were strangers, but not for long.”

The Brooklyn Heights Community Fridge, currently in front of the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn Heights, needs a new home. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

On the first call, the group asked if anyone had an architect, Koster said. She looked across the table where her architect husband James Koster was sitting and said, ‘I think I can find one.’”

James designed the shed and led a “community build” project. “I looked to history for a design that would be welcomed by neighbors in New York City’s oldest Landmark district,” he told the Eagle. “Our original brownstone-shed design stitches the Brooklyn Heights Community Fridge into the fabric of the neighborhood — a 19th century look for a 21st century problem.” Artist Jonathan Neville painted a mural on the original refrigerator’s (since replaced) door.

Neighbors have embraced the fridge’s mission and the shed’s architecture, James said. “It’s sturdy and portable and can be tweaked to meet the look and feel of the next location.”

The refrigerator has become a focal point for community volunteering and has brought together neighbors of all ages, religions and demographics. Groups have been cooking together, holding events like “Crock Pot nights,” and teaching their children what it means to share.

James and Caroline Koster have been involved with the Brooklyn Heights Community Fridge project from the beginning. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

Young volunteers prep more than a thousand meals

The Brooklyn Heights-based Service Collective organizes volunteer service projects for kids, teens and families, including prepping meals and delivering them to the Community Fridge.

“The Service Collective started our ‘Fill the Fridge’ program in September of 2022,” TSC Executive Director Amanda Jones told the Eagle. The program is led by nutritionist Andrea Kapner, founder of Tiny Turnips Kitchen.

“Two or three times a month we gather 15-20 kids ages 8-16 — sometimes younger with their parents — to talk about the important issues of food insecurity and food waste affecting our community,” Jones said. “We discuss ways in which the community fridge both mitigates food waste and meets the needs of hungry neighbors in a unique way. Then, we get to work.”

Over the last four years, TSC has hosted more than 60 Fill the Fridge projects, Jones said. Each time, participants prepare more than 30 complete meals, then package, label and stock them in the fridge. “That’s over 1,000 meals served and 1,000-plus volunteers engaged in the last four years.”

She added, “Each time we fill the fridge, we are met by hungry neighbors looking for a meal. They are so grateful and delighted we are there. The fridge is full when we leave and is almost always completely empty a few hours later.”

Since anyone in need can take food, exact statistics on users are not available. But volunteers stocking the refrigerator say they have met local seniors, Uber drivers, home health care workers, nannies and babysitters, teachers, the homeless, food-pantry users and college students there, Jones said.

“I know the perfect second home for the Brooklyn Heights Community Fridge will emerge when we gather in a town hall and discuss it the old-fashioned way,” Caroline Koster said. “The neighborhood has embraced this beloved resource and a fridge will grow again in Brooklyn—maybe on a different block, maybe a different hue, but with all the same community connection we’ve seen since day one.”

(To learn more about the fridge and help find a new site, RSVP online here.)