Tag: Food

Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, donate, Environment, Family, Food, Food Banks, Healing, Health, outdoors, Philanthropy, Sustainability

Table for All

Written by Alexis Carpenter

Katy Neusner steps in to help pack Sack Packs for children who may not have food at home to help sustain them through the weekend. Tuesday, April 29, 2025. Photo by Alexis Carpenter.

The warehouse lights flicker on as volunteers walk through the door and make their way to rows of stacked pallets and assembly lines. The scent of produce and cardboard boxes mingle in the humid atmosphere, and the sound of pop music fills the large warehouse. Volunteers begin to sort canned goods, bag fresh vegetables, and prepare boxes for distribution.

Yet, beneath this effort lies a growing crisis. The Chattanooga Area Food Bank, a lifeline for residents across 20 counties in Tennessee and Georgia, is dealing with significant funding cuts. A nationwide halt of $500 million in federal food aid, including the suspension of USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation funding, has resulted in the cancellation of multiple truckloads of food. These shipments are now absent from the food bank’s inventory, leaving bare shelves within the warehouse.

In the midst of the working warehouse is Katy Neusner, the Advocacy and Communications Coordinator of the Chattanooga Area Food Bank. As the organization works to bridge the gap left by the funding cuts, Neusner and her colleagues face a task of sustaining their mission amid dwindling resources.​

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Chattanooga, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Entertainment, Family, Health, Safety, Sports, UTC

Golden Age, Golden Hoops

Written by Guy DeWeese

76-year-old Ernest Harris speaks about playing pick-up basketball at his local YMCA and what being active and on his feet with friends means to him.

Elbow pads are strapped on, knee pads are adjusted and you can hear neck braces being velcroed. This is just a typical day at the Hamilton Family YMCA basketball court. Most young hoopers don’t even bother playing against the seasoned vets.. For these senior hoopers, this is their lifestyle. 

John Hendrickson recently moved to Chattanooga from Illinois and the 78-year-old man is one of the many seniors actively playing basketball every Monday at the YMCA. 

“Many of us have a good background in basketball, just a group of guys wanting to do something together,” Hendrickson said.

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Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Food

Chattanooga Cuppa Joe

Written by Megan Cooper

The Hot Chocolatier in Saint Elmo serves a variety of sweet drinks and treats. This store opened in early 2023. November 21, 2024 (Photo by Megan Cooper)

The rich scent of chocolate clings to the walls and the couple inside the Hot Chocolatier store in the early fall morning. Workers begin baking and cleaning the cases filled with chocolate treats from sweet moist flaky cake to dense rich truffles.

Bradon Buckner and his wife Wendy Buckner spend almost every morning at their Market Street or St. Elmo store. Brandon never could have imagined where he and his wife would have ended up. 

The dream would become the Hot Chocolatier that Chattanooga has today started as a hobby. 

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Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Family, Hugs, Sports, teachers

Role Making Chainbreakers

Written by Lexi Foley

Corey Craddock dribbles at Carver Community Center. Thursday, November 21, 2024. (Photo by: Lexi Foley).

Echoes of squeaky shoes and the clap of a basketball compete with the shouts of Corey Craddock as he stops the game for the tenth time to “dispute a call”—in reality, the aging man just needed a break. His team laughed as they recorded an interview of how he’d been feeling about his game. 

Because these courts are in the middle of a high-crime area, men walk through the doors of Carver Community Center and have their bags and coats checked. A security guard wands down their personnel to make sure no weapons are hidden. Chattanooga’s violent crime rate is 282% higher than the national average. One in 16 residents in Chattanooga is at risk of becoming a victim of violent crime. But despite the precautious entrance to the courts, Craddock found hope hooping with his brothers.

These are the 423 chain breakers. 

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Chattanooga, community

Fermentation Masters

Written by Taylor Carmody

Founder of Chattanooga Culture Matt Cone discusses how he came to start making kombucha and how that impacts his business.

Between the growing bacteria, yeast combination and sweetened tea, kombucha possesses a unique flavor that can sometimes defer potential customers. But according to Matt Cone, founder of Chattanooga Culture, after enough time, kombucha can turn into not only something that benefits consumers, but also something they can enjoy.

“My buddy out in Colorado brewed a lot of kombucha for himself personally, and I always thought it was a very interesting drink. I was turned off by it at first, like everybody is. It’s kind of an acquired taste,” Cone said.

After tasting some of his friend’s kombucha, Cone began doing research on health and wellness. This led him to pursuing further education within that field; Cone ended up getting his degree in Health and Wellness at Life University in Georgia.

“I learned as much as I could in that realm and just kind of figured out how to pull all of these pieces together and build a business out of it, so that’s what Chattanooga Culture is,” Cone said. “It’s not just kombucha. It’s not just fermentation. It’s all of the years of experience.” 

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Chattanooga, community, Food, women

BUILDING BROADS

Written by William Chen

Bailey Cole and Kristiana Mallo, two female entrepreneurs, are set to open the doors of their new lounge, BROADS. BROADS will be the first and only female-focused bar in Chattanooga, serving food and beverages obtained from female-owned and female-led businesses. BROADS will be located in the heart of Downtown Chattanooga to be an inclusive space for all.

After over ten years serving the Chattanooga area with their vegan restaurant endeavor Cashew, Bailey Cole, and Kristiana Mallo are set to open their doors for a new project in the heart of downtown called “BROADS.” Cole and Mallo have dedicated BROADS to being a “Female-Forward” bar. 

“I think everybody kind of agrees [broads] had a negative connotation,” Cole said. “To us, [broads] is an empowering word. We’re trying to make it fun; it’s more about a strong woman.”

The inspiration for the name “BROADS” came from one of their friends who frequently uses it in her vocabulary. Overtime, they grew fond of the term in that usage.

“[BROADS] is just something pretty different. I think it’s different even in the country,” Mallo said. “….it’s more of an old-school term, so we want to totally bring it back.”

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Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, donate, Family, Food, Healing, Health, Hugs, Love, Sustainability, UTC, women

Let’s Go Shopping

Written by Caroline Colvin

Niki Bishop is the program director at Metropolitan Ministries. Bishop manages the grocery store program, which provides food to anyone in need.

Niki Bishop is the Program Director at Metropolitan Ministries’ Impact Hub on Rossville Boulevard. The Impact Hub is a conglomerate for many different community resources all under one roof, giving help to those in need. 

Bishop manages the grocery store program at MetMin. Funded through a grant from the Lyndhurst Foundation, the store provides a wide variety of fresh food and essentials once a month to anyone who needs it, no questions asked. 

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Chattanooga, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Family, Food, History, Immigration

Hecho con amor (Made With Love)

Written by Cassandra Castillo

Valdemar Ibarra and Carmen Torres prepare the grill and prep area for a customers order. The couple has cooked to order upon request since their restaurant’s inception in 2012. Wednesday April 19, 2023. (Photo by Cassandra Castillo)

Natives of Michoacan, Mexico, Carmen Torres and Valdemar Ibarra have been living their American Dream cooped up inside their small orange-painted restaurant nestled within the busy Amnicola Highway.

“All the people from Chattanooga, from Hixson, Redbank, Dunlap, Dayton who are all customers, many of them friends because we were eager to have family, eager to have friends, so we have many friendships now,” Ibarra said. 

He was a businessman from his days in Mexico, but left that behind when he arrived in the U.S. as an immigrant in 1992. Ibarra began working in California but found no steady income, so he moved to the Chattanooga area, where his cousin resided, not long after. 

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Chattanooga, community, Daily Life, Family, Food, History, Love

A Family Thing

By Hannah Blair Hurt

Joe “Dixie” Fuller prepares his peach cobbler for his family restaurant Zarzour’s. Sunday, November 20, 2022. (Photo by Hannah Blair Hurt)

Walking through the door of Zarzour’s Cafe on Chattanooga’s Southside feels a bit like walking into a time capsule containing four generations of Zarzour family history, owners of the small brick building for over 100 years. The shelves and walls are adorned with an array of heirlooms and memorabilia, from family photos, celebrity autographs and newspaper clippings to Charles Zarzour’s naturalization papers from 1946, signed in Arabic.

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