Omar Bravo says helping people is central to his life’s mission.
“Giving back, to me, is taking care of each other in community,” Bravo said.
His focus on community began five years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. When Bravo — a former restaurant chef — saw his neighbors out of work and without fresh food, he co-founded an outdoor community market in Long Island City called Connected Chef.
“Nobody should be struggling to eat,” he said.
To get started, he used GoFundMe, paying farmers in the Hudson Valley market rate for their produce, but offering the food at whatever price Queens residents could pay.
Connected Chef says it has served nearly 50,000 people in five years at its Long Island City location, but moved last month to Woodside, in part because they required more space.
“We get to do more,” Bravo said.
The organization says it raises money through individual donations, state and federal funding, and earned income from people paying what they can.
“Giving access to families who don’t have resources, or don’t have enough income, so anybody who comes and shop to our community fresh market, if they choose to take 25% or 50%, we don’t ask them any questions,” he said, referring to the discounts offered for produce on the sliding scale option.
Bravo says more than half of the free grocery store boxes packed in Woodside go straight to households run by women, including single mothers at the Queensbridge Houses, the nation’s largest public housing complex. And the nonprofit organization’s fresh market is open three times a week for New Yorkers who want to shop in person.
“I think it’s really important to pay it forward, and I think that’s exactly what Omar does, not only with his work, but just how he treats people,” said Nadine Edwards, who first came across Connected Chef when it was based in Long Island City.
Edwards pays on a sliding scale, and says she looks forward to picking up her groceries every week in Woodside.
“Many families, we’re working families, and we bring home a paycheck, but we’re living paycheck to paycheck,” she said “And it’s been just really hard to sometimes just afford the simplest and the healthiest of foods.”
Bravo says he wants the shopping experience to be dignified for all community members: those who can afford to pay, and those who need to rely on the sliding scale option.
“I don’t do it to be a hero or to make me feel good about it. I just know that there is so much need in our communities, especially education, food, which is a human right,” he said.
Bravo’s main role with Connected Chef is working with farmers to get the food from upstate New York to the city. He says 80% of the produce comes from Black and brown farmers.
Meanwhile, he says New Yorkers depending upon the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will also be able to shop at Connected Chef soon using their EBT cards.
