From celebrated luxury hotel executive chef to founder of a nonprofit feeding the hungry in Orange County, Bill Bracken stands committed to making a difference
Bill Bracken, founder of Bracken’s Kitchen, will receive the Outstanding Founders honor at National Philanthropy Day Orange County on November 14
The Beginnings
Bill Bracken fondly remembers cooking with his mother and grandmothers growing up in the small town of Wathena, Kansas.
“It was an agricultural area, so food was central to our lives,“ he says. “Mom and Dad always had a huge garden and canned and ate the produce in the winter. I remember sitting on the porch snapping beans and shucking corn for canning with my three older sisters. We also had rhubarb, blackberries, blueberries and strawberries growing in our yard.”
By age 12, he had his first restaurant job as a dishwasher in a local diner and by 13, Bracken was in the kitchen cooking. Following high school, he attended a small vocational school, where he entered a statewide “Skills Olympics” cooking competition and won first place two years running. When he placed first at the national competition, he was offered a scholarship to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York, where he honed his skills for two years.
Bracken’s Culinary History
Hired by Mandalay Four Seasons in Dallas right out of CIA, Bracken soon moved to Four Seasons Newport Beach as Chef de Cuisine.
“I was also offered the job at Four Seasons Los Angeles, but I chose Newport. I grew up with the Beach Boys, so it was a dream come true.”
Bill remained in Newport from 1987 to 1994 and left as Executive Sous Chef to become Executive Chef at The Peninsula Beverly Hills, where he oversaw the hotel’s culinary divisions, including the Belvedere restaurant, which during his tenure was awarded the prestigious AAA Five Diamond Award for 12 consecutive years. He was also voted “Chef of the Year” by the California Restaurant Writers Association and received rave reviews in many national publications.
In October, 2005, Bracken joined the Island Hotel (formerly the Four Seasons and currently the Fashion Island Hotel) in Newport Beach as executive chef, overseeing the property’s culinary operations. In 2010, he was in charge of the entire F & B division, while still wearing his chef coat.
By 2013, Bracken sensed a new calling.
“I’d been feeding celebrities and the well-heeled for a long time, and I felt it was time to feed people who really needed it,” he says.
The New Venture
“I did some consulting for Divbar Smokehouse BBQ and 3-Thirty-3 Waterfront while planning a nonprofit to feed hungry children and adults,” he says. “I applied for IRS nonprofit status on March 25, 2013 and by November, Bracken’s Kitchen was born.”
Bracken’s idea of a food truck to bring nutritious food to the people who need it caused an immediate fundraising drive to raise money to buy the truck. Fortunately for him, Bruce Hecker of Bruce’s Catering in Los Angeles donated the food truck, which was already named “Betsy.”
Since those early days, Bracken has worked with existing relationships to develop partnerships with some of the country’s top food vendors, and more importantly, join forces with food recovery organizations. The rescued food is cooked, prepared and processed to create healthy, nutritious meals.
Bracken now has 14 employees and a 9,000 sq. ft. commercial kitchen in Garden Grove, where he hosts a huge “chopped” cooking effort daily through a culinary volunteer program, which turns out more than 30,000 nutritious, wholesome and hearty meals per month. He also established a mentorship program through a Chefs to End Hunger initiative, where at-risk young men and women are trained for jobs in the culinary world.
Bracken credits the huge number of volunteers to Bracken’s Kitchen’s success.
“Our goal for 2019 was originally 300,000 meals,” Bracken says, “but we have increased that number to 350,000, thanks to our network of wonderful, amazing people. And, we have an increase of 300% in recoverable food this year.”
Fundraising efforts for Bracken’s Kitchen includes a Pizza Throwdown with competing teams striving to win the best pizza prize, and The Hungry Games, established in 2018, which just held its second annual fundraising effort at the Garden Grove facility. It featured an evening of great food and wine with an impressive roster of seven chefs.
Bracken works with Solutions for Urban Agriculture (SFUA) on many events at the Giving Farm in Westminster to support the AG program at Westminster High School, which gives Bracken’s Kitchen lots of produce from their various farms.
“We worked with them in early August to provide thousands of pounds of produce for the Karina’s Backpack Project at Anaheim Stadium,” Bracken says.
Putting it into Prospective
Bracken shares some statistics about hunger in Orange County. He says that Orange County has an estimated 299,000 people who struggle with food insecurity on a regular basis. If you count that number times three meals a day 365 days a year, you get 327,405,000 meals that residents in Orange County struggle to put together each year.
“Think of LA County and all across America, and you get a glimpse into the crisis that I talk about so often,” he says.
Continuing, he says that when you consider the fact that the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that up to 40% of our food supply is going into landfill, having never been consumed, you can really see the dysfunctional and broken food system that we have.
“While Bracken’s Kitchen ultimately exists for one reason – to help people – it is the power of food that we leverage and those statistics that we are striving to change,” Bracken says.
“So, we have a lot more to do. But, our message remains that lives are changed through food. Breaking bread with people breaks down walls. We are committed to the fact that before you can give refuge to the homeless, educate our young, heal our sick or offer hope to the afflicted, we must be able to feed them.”
BrackensKitchen.org / 949.445.3585