This Woman Started a Plant-Based Food Co-Op With Just $200 to Help Her Community

For many of us, food is more than just a way to nourish our bodies and please our palates — it is a way to connect with our friends, family, and community. We have fond memories of gathering around the dinner table, anxiously waiting for the moment when grandma sets her famous lasagna down and we can be the first to grab a corner slice and listen to the stories that our older relatives have to tell. Or, we have memories of muggy summer evenings on our friend’s deck, sharing cool beers by the grill. Food brings us together — which is likely why for many, making the switch to a plant-based diet can be such a challenge.

Chef Ysanet Batista felt similar feelings when she first went vegetarian. She is now one half of Woke Foods, a plant-based Dominican food co-op that provides cooking classes, catering, and meal prep for the community in the neighborhood of Washington Heights, New York. Chef Ysanet grew up in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where she and her family stuck to the staple Dominican diet of  “La Bandera Dominicana,” or a plate of rice, beans, and meat. At age 15, she came across the PETA website. The graphic imagery weighed heavy on her heart and the young Chef Ysanet decided that she could never eat meat again. But, she wasn’t sure how she could enjoy the food that she and her family loved. Luckily, she found Support in her journey. Chef Ysanet told Medium, “I thought making the food I grew up eating vegetarian would be impossible. But my mentor Jeseli Soto and my grandmother demonstrated to me it wasn’t.”

Last summer, Chef Ysanet brought her passion for “holistic cooking, farming, writing, community organizing, and making homemade products” to life and founded Woke Foods with only $200 in equity. Today, Chef Ysanet operates her business with the help of Merelis Catalina Ortiz, an Afro-indígena Dominicana who has worked as a nutrition educator for the past five years and who currently works as a wellness organizer for schools and preschools to “bring wellness to their spaces in a culturally respectful way.”

Through Woke Foods, Chef Ysanet shows her community how to make cultural cuisines plant-based, such as this plate of Dominican mashed plantains paired with plant-based sausage, avocado, and cilantro.

For Woke Foods, sharing cultural cuisine is part of their mission.  In April, the business hosted its first in a series of cooking classes where chefs of color and community organizers could collaborate to create four-course meals.

 Chef Ysanet told Medium, “I want to make sure we are not cooping other cultures. So I ensure chefs who are from a particular country teach their cuisine.”

Chef Ysanet, pictured right, also seeks to empower her community through food: “I want people in my community to understand that food is political even though we don’t see it that way. We vote with our dollars. Farmers of color are constantly being exploited in our food system here and in my island. People need to stay woke about their food.”

She also hopes to open an organic farm in the Dominican Republic that will aid in the economic growth of the local community: “I have a dream where Dominican and Haitian people have collaborative ownership of land and create a space that heals land-based and racial trauma and contributes to our economic sovereignty.”

Currently, Chef Ysanet is working to purchase a plot of land in the Dominican Republic in order to grow organic produce that will not only empower the Washington Heights community, but the local community where the food is grown. If you would like to contribute, you can do so by visiting her YouCaring page.

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Lead image source: Woke Foods/Facebook