Food Riot Dickinson

10/29/2026

I took this picture Thursday night because I looked around our kitchen and suddenly realized just how many people I love were gathered in one place. 🥹❤️

This is just a small sample of the amazing people who have helped us keep Food Riot Foundation going. And when I say helped, I mean so much more than cooking, serving meals, washing dishes, and all the other things that make our little corner of the world work.

Sometimes I get so caught up in everything that needs doing that I forget to stop and look around.

Thursday night, I looked around. And there they were. ❤️

All these different people, with different stories and different lives, coming together because they care about feeding our community.

And it hit me all over again that Food Riot has never really been just about food.

It’s about people. It’s about belonging. It’s about finding a place where you can help, connect with others, and be part of something bigger than yourself. It’s about the beautiful things that happen when people decide to show up for each other.

We’re a work in progress, folks. 😂 We’ve got plenty left to do, plenty to figure out, and a whole lot of growing ahead of us. But I know I want Food Riot to always be a place where people matter, where dignity matters, and where we remember that we’re all part of the same community.

For the community. By the community. ❤️

And to everyone who’s ever volunteered with us, whether you’ve been here from jump or just stopped in to lend a hand once upon a time, THANK YOU. There’s always room for more good people, more helping hands, and more friends around our family table! ❤️

To every person who’s ever walked through our doors to help, whether you’re in this picture or not, Jerry and I love you, appreciate you, and thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Now somebody tell me how I’m supposed to get anything done around here when I’m busy loving everybody. 😂❤️

10/24/2026

❤️🥐 **SOME COMMUNITY PARTNERS DESERVE A LITTLE EXTRA LOVE! 🥐❤️

Today, we want to give a HUGE shout-out and a heartfelt THANK YOU to Baker Boy for their continued generosity and support of Food Riot Foundation! ❤️

Sometimes, the biggest difference in a community comes from businesses that quietly show up, week after week, simply because they care.

That’s exactly what Baker Boy has been doing for us!

Jerry calls them on Mondays, and they graciously set aside a case or two of their beautiful bakery products for us to pick up on Tuesdays. These aren’t just boxes of baked goods to us. They’re opportunities to serve something special to our neighbors, put smiles on faces, and make a meal feel like a little more than just dinner.

We’ve received so many wonderful rolls that have made their way onto our dinner tables, and our guests have truly enjoyed them. More recently, we received their absolutely delicious square croissants, and just look at what we were able to make with them! 😍

We turned those beautiful croissants into chicken Cordon Bleu croissant sandwiches for one of our dinners, and they were every bit as delicious as they look!

This is what happens when a generous local business and a community meal program come together. ❤️ One business shares its product, our kitchen turns it into a meal, and people in our community get to enjoy something delicious that they might not otherwise have had.

At Food Riot, we believe everyone deserves a good meal, served with dignity, regardless of their circumstances. We welcome our community to eat with us, and our meals are free to everyone. No barriers. No judgment. Just good food and people helping people.

Many of you remember Food Riot from our restaurant days, when our community helped us earn Best Italian five years in a row, along with several Best Takeout awards! Today, we’re using that same passion for food to serve our community in a different way. And we’re grateful that the Food Riot family continues to grow, with thousands of people following our journey here on Facebook.

That means we have an opportunity to do something wonderful together: shine a light on the businesses that give back and inspire even more community partnerships.

So, to the team at Baker Boy: THANK YOU! Thank you for the beautiful products, for making it easy for us to pick them up, and most importantly, for continuing to support our mission. Your generosity helps us put good food on the table for people who need it, and we hope you know how much that means to us. We appreciate you more than a Facebook post can ever fully express! ❤️

🥖 AND HERE’S A LITTLE MESSAGE TO OTHER LOCAL BUSINESSES!

Are you a bakery, restaurant, grocery store, food distributor, or another business that occasionally has extra products you could share?

Maybe you have bread, rolls, pastries, produce, meat, or other food products that could be put to good use.

We would LOVE to talk with you!

You don’t have to make a huge donation to make a huge difference. Sometimes, a few cases of product can help us serve an entire room full of people. What might be extra inventory to one business can become a delicious meal for someone else.

When local businesses support local people, our entire community benefits. And we would love to celebrate and thank the businesses that help make our mission possible!

Please join us in showing Baker Boy some love in the comments! ❤️ And if you know a local business that might be interested in partnering with Food Riot, tag them below or share this post.

Baker Boy, thank you for helping us feed our community, one beautiful baked good at a time! 🥐❤️

Food Riot Foundation — Good food. Good people. No barriers.

10/23/2026

It’s not a true food riot until we’re smashing pumpkins in the parking lot!! We have the BEST neighbors here at St. Joe’s Plaza! 🎃😁💕

10/22/2026

🎉❤️ $4,000 WORTH OF LOVE FOR FOOD RIOT! ❤️🎉

Sometimes people do more than make your day… they make a REAL difference in your community! And that’s exactly what happened thanks to some amazing people at the Elks Lodge Underground 1137! 🥰🙌

The Food Riot Foundation received an incredibly generous $4,000 donation to purchase groceries and supplies for our community kitchen, and we are beyond grateful! ❤️

A HUGE shout-out to the super awesome Stepheny, who helped make this all happen! 🫶 Yesterday, Stepheny and I hit the stores together and started shopping for some of the things we need to keep our kitchen stocked and our meals coming! 🛒🥫🍗

And let me tell you… $4,000 worth of groceries and supplies means SO MUCH to a little nonprofit working to make sure people in our community have access to a hot meal. Every dollar helps us do more of what we love: feeding people, caring for our neighbors, and making sure that everyone is welcome at our table, with no barriers. ❤️

To Stepheny, and to everyone at the Elks Lodge Underground 1137who helped make this incredible gift possible — THANK YOU! Thank you for thinking of us, believing in what we do, and investing in the people of our community. Your generosity will reach so much further than the grocery carts we filled yesterday. It will help fill plates, feed hungry neighbors, and keep Food Riot doing what Food Riot does best! 🍽️❤️

We couldn’t do this without people like YOU! And we hope you enjoy these pictures of just a little bit of the goodness your generosity is making possible. 📸🛒

From all of us at Food Riot Foundation: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! ❤️

🍽️❤️

10/11/2026

❤️ A LITTLE LOVE, A WHOLE LOT OF GRATITUDE, AND A BIG THANK YOU FROM FOOD RIOT FOUNDATION! ❤️

First, we need to say something to all of you who continue to show up for Food Riot Foundation. Whether you’ve been volunteering your time, rolling up your sleeves and getting things done, sponsoring us, donating money, contributing supplies, helping behind the scenes, or simply finding ways to support our mission, PLEASE KNOW HOW MUCH WE APPRECIATE YOU! 🥹❤️

We owe so many of you thank-you posts, acknowledgments, and shout-outs, and we know we haven’t been keeping up the way we normally would. We actually have a growing collection of photos and notes documenting the generosity, hard work, and kindness so many of you have shown us. Those thank-yous are coming, and we look forward to sharing them! ❤️

In the meantime, we wanted to take a moment to let everyone know WHY things have been a little quieter on that front.

As many of you know, our family has been navigating an incredibly difficult and emotional personal battle involving the child welfare system in Williston and our fight to bring our granddaughter, Myra, home through adoption. It has taken an enormous amount of our time, energy, and emotional strength. Some days, just keeping our heads above water has been a challenge, and keeping up with everything we would normally do has fallen behind.

But please, NEVER mistake our silence for a lack of gratitude. Never think that because we haven’t posted a thank-you, we haven’t noticed what you’ve done. Never think that your hours of work, your donations, your sponsorships, or your willingness to stand beside us have gone unnoticed or unappreciated.

We see you. We appreciate you. We are grateful for you. And we love you for continuing to believe in what we’re doing, even when life gets messy on our end. ❤️

Because here’s the thing: Food Riot Foundation has never been about just one person, one family, or one kitchen. It’s about an entire community coming together to take care of its own.

Every meal served represents someone who cared enough to give, someone who volunteered their time, someone who donated what they could, or someone who believed that nobody in our community should go hungry.

That’s what makes this whole thing so special. We may be the ones coordinating things, cooking, and trying to keep everything moving, but we could NEVER do it without all of you. Every single contribution matters. Every volunteer matters. Every sponsor matters. Every dollar matters. Every act of kindness matters.

Food Riot Foundation is FOR the community, BY the community, and because of the community. ❤️🍽️

So, while we work through our personal challenges and slowly catch up on all those overdue thank-yous, please know that our hearts are full of gratitude for every single person who has helped us continue feeding our neighbors.

Thank you for showing up. Thank you for pitching in. Thank you for giving what you can. Thank you for caring about people you may never even meet. And thank you for reminding us that even when life gets hard, there is still so much good in this world.

We haven’t forgotten you. We haven’t forgotten what you’ve done. And we will never stop being grateful that you’re part of this crazy, beautiful Food Riot family. ❤️

WE LOVE YOU ALL, AND WE THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS! 🥹❤️🙏

With love and gratitude,

Jill and Jerry and the Food Riot Foundation family ❤️🍽️

❤️

09/17/2026

Free Community Supper tonight is Chicken Strips and French Fries with Fresh Fruit and Salad Bar!
Everyone is welcome! Free Will donations are accepted but absolutely not required!
Thursday September 17 @ 30 7th St W from 4:30-6:00pm!

08/27/2026

Community mean tonight is hot dogs/fries and all the fixings.
Plus our amazing salad and fruit bar

08/06/2026

Still our ultimate goal, is to welcome our amazing daughter, Alice, home.
Ali, if you are reading this, we love you so much! Please come home! We will always have a place for you. 💕🙏🏻🏡💕

It’s been a little more than five years since we decided to move Food Riot into St. Joe’s Plaza. I have probably told the story about the F on the door and the Garfield poster in the office that pulled me into this odd location at least a hundred times. There were other locations that seemed better for a restaurant, but every time I tried to walk away, fate drew me back into that old hospital cafeteria kitchen. Five years later I have dozens of stories of struggles and hardships we’ve gone through in that building. So many stories, but zero regrets. Zero regrets because I have also witnessed miracles, big and small, happen in that building.
The biggest miracle was our own personal experience. Our daughter, Alice, had been struggling with addiction for nearly a decade, and just couldn’t shake her addictions no matter how much we all wanted to help her.
When we signed our lease at St Joe’s back in 2020, it was with the understanding that not only was Food Riot opening a restaurant in the basement of this huge empty hospital, but that we would also be establishing a food service kitchen that would be available to serve any future residential treatment centers that were considering a location in the plaza. I’d be lying if I wasn’t thinking “this could be a place for Alice” but hope faded as time went by. Alice’s life circumstances and health continually got worse.
Three years later, Heartview Foundation opened their doors and we served them their first meal. Amidst their opening, Alice called us from her tent in Seattle and said MOM IM PREGNANT WHAT DO I DO? I told her she didn’t have a choice, she had a baby to protect, she had to stop using, she had to come home. Alice got on a Greyhound to Dickinson, immediately enrolled into Heartview and became clean and sober for her daughter, who was born full term in perfect health! The photo below was taken in December of 2023, a few months before our granddaughter Myra Grace was born. 🙏🏻💕🙏🏻
We don’t expect to ever top that miracle, but after a year of uncertainty, we are excited to have found clarity on the next chapter for Food Riot.
After 5 years of Scharlie Kilzer and her amazing crew at Amen Food Pantry being our favorite back hall neighbors, we are officially licensed and approved to partner with them to use our kitchen and to assist them with providing hot meals to the community!
There are still some minor details to work out before we make a formal announcement, but it is officially happening!!
Watch for our next post about our soon to open FREE TO EVERYONE soup and salad bar!!
And yes, we do still hope and pray every day that this will, once again, become a place for Alice. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

07/07/2026

This evening's Community Kitchen Menu features: pulled pork sandwich, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, and a fruit bar.

07/03/2026

Last night was SO MUCH FUN!!! But due to the heat and our kitchens AC still not working, I had to retreat to my office for survival! 🥵
Because I was hiding from heat, I only got a portion of our amazing volunteers photographed and I’m regretting that!! Our cook Charles, who selflessly volunteers his time every Tuesday and Tuesday, decided to take it up a notch and together with our manager, Toni, another selfless volunteer who we rely on SO MUCH (thank you volunteers!!🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻)
Our bestie Shauna brought her amazing granddaughters and of course a bunch of our regular volunteers were running around just making magic happen, like they always do. 🥰🙏🏻🤩
Being able to share food with those who need it is a huge blessing. Our mission has proven to be so much bigger than that though! The relationships forming in the kitchen, in the dining room and beyond are simply beautiful. It’s a gathering spot where no one matters more (or less) than anyone else. We’re just so happy we’re here, and our biggest goal is to make everyone feel welcome. Our only hope is that when you exit our kitchen and/or dining area, as a volunteer or a diner, your belly feels a little fuller and your heart feels a little lighter. 🙏🏻💕🙏🏻
PS If anyone of you volunteers (Shauna, Kristin, Toni???) took pictures please feel free to share them! I know im missing so many cute faces in this post!!