Oceanside Leaders: Vallie Gilley of Feeding the Soul Foundation

OCEANSIDE, CA —Vallie Gilley is a fourth-generation Oceanside resident and the owner and operator of Jitters Coffee pub for more than 18 years. While that would be enough to keep most people busy and fulfilled, Vallie, is no ordinary person.

Gilley is also the Executive Director of O'side Kitchen Collaborative and founder of Feeding the Soul Foundation. This year she was selected as the 36th District Woman Of The Year for 2021 by CA Senator Patricia Bates.

The Patch reached out to Vallie to get the story behind her many accomplishments and contributions to Oceanside and the entire community.

1. How did you get started and how has the journey been so far - has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?

Wow, it’s been a challenging and rewarding journey as a female business owner. My experiences with entrepreneurship have been varied, but always rooted in providing for my community. As the owner of Jitters Coffee Pub in Oceanside, providing the highest quality edible offerings, services, and community spaces is at the heart of what I do. My greatest challenge has been taking my passion for local causes, artists, and food and turning that into a local non-profit. Creating Feeding the Soul Foundation has allowed me to further my personal reach with the immense help of my community.

2. How did you get involved with the Feeding the Soul Foundation and launching O'side Kitchen Collaborative?

I started Feeding the Soul when my mother was terminally ill 12 years ago, to channel all of the sad energy into something productive and helpful to others. I always say her love lives through my work. Feeding the Soul Foundation is a concert and events non-profit that works to support local artists and social causes. Our events strongly emphasize music and food, the common language, we as people speak. When an RFP came up at the City for the operation of the Green Oceanside Kitchen, it seemed like the perfect fit for our mission. Our initiative, OKC, was born from this collaboration.

3. OKC started collaborating with the City of Oceanside during the COVID19 outbreak. Tell us more about what that involved and how it's going?

Our partnership with the City of Oceanside started Pre-Covid with the use of their Green Oceanside Kitchen as the operators. We had a great grand opening in Late June 2019. By September, we were working with community farms, partners and finalizing all permits and licenses to create zero-waste products to keep food on our plates and out of landfills. We started designing educational culinary and community classes. Our conscious catering calendar was getting full and the new year looked bright. We worked with Green Oceanside on our first community event together in the new demo kitchen to kick off the holiday season. Everything was exciting and our partnership thriving. Things really seemed wonderful and then by late February most of our events started getting canceled and by March 15th everything came to a halt for normal life. OKC pivoted quickly and reached out to the City to partner with Oceanside to help our most vulnerable community members. For 18 weeks the City of Oceanside paid for 500 meals a day, 7 days a week. OKC was able to feed 1500 to 4000 meals a day. With our own private donations, rescued food , and our huge team volunteers, in combination with city funds and the use of the kitchen, we distributed over 200,000 meals. We currently work with the City of Oceanside as partners with CDBG funds. We help in different community groups when services are needed.

4. What's your most successful program and why?

To date, our most successful initiative has been our Covid Re-Leaf Efforts. Since March of 2020, OKC has diverted 300,000 pounds of donated and rescued edible food, creating 351,000 meals for our community partners and additionally distributed 45,000 supplemental food boxes to those in need. O’side Kitchen Collaborative believes that food relief is one of the first lines of defense in sustaining a healthy community. Being able to divert and distribute these meals has been a key indicator for success and momentum towards a healthier local food-system.

5. Give me your best example of the way you've seen your organization's work make a difference?

Beyond responding to food-insecurity in our community, we are incredibly proud of having diverted over 500,00 pounds from the landfill. The heart of our work is recognizing and responding to the inextricable link between food security and sustainable communities. OKC believes in a holistic approach to our local food system.

6. What are the greatest areas of opportunity for your organization?

Our greatest area for opportunity as an organization is our collaborative work with other local non-profits. We believe in closing gaps in food production, processing, distribution, and waste. The more we are able to connect to all of these elements of our community, the more we are able to bridge resources.

7. What are your long-term goals for yourself and OKC?

Our long term goal is to grow our catering program, as it has been temporarily on hold due to covid restrictions. Ideally, we would like to be able to balance our catering operations with our continued disaster relief beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic.

8. Are you looking for volunteers, donors, etc? How can people get more involved?

OKC is always looking for volunteers! Having an incredible team of volunteers is what makes our operation so successful and unique. We encourage volunteers and anybody looking to get involved, to visit our website. Donations from our community help us keep us operating at full capacity and increase our ability to serve. Donations are greatly appreciated and can be made on our “Donate” page on our website.

9. Anything else you want to add?

Yes, we would love to let people know about our monthly pop-ups! We feature our chef-crafted offerings including vegan tacos, a variety of baked goods, and jams and preserves made from local agricultural surplus. All of our proceeds go directly back to our feeding program.

Tune in to the April 7, 2021 Oceanside City Council meeting as California Senator Patricia “Pat” Bates honors Oceanside Resident Vallie Gilley as 36th Senate District Woman of the Year.

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