Ex-Marine ‘felt hopeless.’ Then he saw a sign on an NC building that changed his life.
Bryan Diaz felt hopeless when he left the U.S. Marine Corps after 2 1/2 years due to an injury while stationed in California.
“Once I left, I really felt lost,” the 22-year-old said. “A loss of hope. And I really didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
Diaz returned to his native Carolinas. He was born and raised in Rock Hill and also has family in Mooresville.
A sign on a new building caught his eye while driving one day on Charlotte Highway (U.S. 21) northwest of downtown Mooresville: FeedNC, it said.
It would soon change his life.
By then, Diaz, who is Mexican and Puerto Rican, had at least considered the culinary trade. He loved cooking Hispanic food as a boy, he said, including dishes with his Puerto Rican grandma in her Rock Hill kitchen.
“But I didn’t know how to proceed with it,” he said of the career.
Wondering what the sign meant, he Googled the name, clicked on its website “and it blew my mind,” Diaz said.
On the site, Diaz read how FeedNC serves free hot breakfasts and lunches that diners order from a menu that changes each weekday. Everyone’s welcome, rich or poor.
People who qualify can also get weekly groceries in another part of the building or have them delivered to their homes.
What really astonished Diaz, and soon transformed his life, he said, were the culinary and warehouse workforce development programs also offered by FeedNC.
FeedNC culinary students and restaurant
Feed NC culinary students put what they learn directly into making meals they cook to order in the kitchen of its spacious Donoghue’s Open Door restaurant in the building.
The restaurant is large enough to also host community events, such as a Mooresville mayoral forum in October, and corporate gatherings. The restaurant also has a stage.
“I instantly signed up on their website” for the culinary program, Diaz told The Charlotte Observer at FeedNC in late October, just before making cook-to-order meals on what happened to be an all-Italian menu day.
“A few months later, they contacted me” to let him know he’d been accepted into the 12-week program, Diaz said. “And down the road, here I am, all within a span of three, four months.”
“I come in, I get hands-on with chefs, I get hands-on in the kitchen,” he said. “We get over 250 hours of hands-on experience.”
90% employment rate
Seventy students graduated from FeedNC’s culinary and warehouse programs combined this year, the organization’s program coordinator Brittany Holbert said.
The organization relies entirely on community donations. It operated for many years as the Mooresville Soup Kitchen, in a smaller space on Broad Street in downtown Mooresville.
The new building on Charlotte Highway opened on April 3 after a capital campaign raised $7.5 million, Holbert said.
Its workforce development programs started years earlier, in 2018, and accept students of all skill levels, she said.
“We are at a 90% employment rate for both programs,” she said, and nearly 65% of graduates are still in those jobs six months later.
“Over 50 businesses in the community know about the program and hire the students,” Holbert said, ranging from local restaurants and grocery stores to Davidson College and Lake Norman Regional Medical Center.
Diaz said his training at FeedNC has had a positive effect on his life.
“Everybody around me in my life, they’re very proud (of me) and they love where I’m at right now, he said.
“And when I’m not here, I’m always talking about the program,” he said. “I like to be a little ambassador for what they do here, because it’s been really good on me. It was at a hard time of my life, and it’s given me a pickup sense.”
He’d like to open a Mexican and Puerto Rican fusion restaurant.
Jambalaya and roux
Student Carlotta Knox, a 42-year-old single mother of three, would love to be a sous chef or chef and own a restaurant featuring “my own play” on jambalaya.
“I would love to make the sauce that goes with it,” she said. “To me, that flavor, like when we create the roux, these are things that I’ve learned here.”
Roux is a mix of flour and fat created to thicken sauces.
“What this has done for me is, it’s given me an education that can further a career and build one,” Knox said. “It gave me a new self-confidence ... I want to create dishes that can further people’s taste buds to things they can never imagine.”
‘The dignity concept’ in feeding a family
LaTonda Faggart’s family is one benefiting from the culinary creations.
She and her children are among the 150 guests the restaurant serves each day. FeedNC distributes another 1,000 meals each week to the homes of veterans, the elderly and working families in need through its FeedNC Mobile Markets program.
Faggart, a single mother of four, doesn’t earn enough from working overnight at an Amazon fulfillment center in Concord to support herself and her children, she said.
“We’re trying our best, but we’re not currently making ends meet,” she said.
At the time of her interview with the Observer, Faggart was on limited work duty after a box hit her on the head at work.
FeedNC meals are important to her “because we can’t afford on a daily basis to pay all the bills, on top of feeding ourselves,” she said.
“And it’s nice to come in here and be welcomed, and not just accepted,” she said. “There’s a difference between welcoming somebody and accepting them. Here, they actually want us, and that’s appreciated.”
What’s different from the old Mooresville Soup Kitchen “is the dignity piece,” Holbert said. “We really try to hone in on the dignity concept, where people walk in and go straight to the order kiosk like in other restaurants. They go through the menu and pick what they like.”
Like Faggart, most people served by the various programs at FeedNC work, but don’t earn enough to pay all the bills, Holbert said.
“They’re trying their best, but it’s just not enough to get by,” she said.
“It means everything,” Holbert said of the difference that FeedNC and its many volunteers make in others’ lives. “You have people come to you at some of the hardest times of their lives, and we tell them, ‘We’re going to do this together.’”
What’s next at FeedNC
Team Penske, the Mooresville-based NASCAR team, sponsored the wrap for a FeedNC food truck that will visit food deserts in the area in 2024, Holbert said.
FeedNC also plans to provide summer programming for children in low-income areas, she said.
And with the food truck, the organization intends to provide summer lunches to children.
How, where to get food, groceries from FeedNC
Address: 2456 Charlotte Hwy, Mooresville, NC 28117
Dining hours: 9 a.m.-2 p.m. weekdays. Meals are free and open to everyone. A box in the lobby outside the restaurant is available for anyone who’d like to give a general donation to the non-profit organization.
Grassroots Grocery: FeedNC provides weekly groceries to residents of Iredell, Cabarrus, Rowan and north Mecklenburg counties who meet income-based eligibility requirements.
The grocery sees 16,000 visits a year, according to FeedNC figures.
By getting groceries from the grocery, families save $150 to $200 a week, Holbert said. That’s money they can use to pay for child care and rent, mortgage and utility bills, she said.
The grocery serves over 4,000 disadvantaged people, including the unemployed and underemployed.
This story was originally published December 29, 2023 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Ex-Marine ‘felt hopeless.’ Then he saw a sign on an NC building that changed his life.."