FOUNDERS

Courtney Lewis

Bronx, NY

Co Founder & Executive Director of Development

Homelessness and hunger are no strangers to Courtney as she experienced both while pursuing her culinary arts degree. Despite her distress in 2016, she graduated early from Johnson & Wales University in 2017. She began her three year stint in the restaurant industry in New Orleans and ended it in the DC area, having worked in catering, various fine dining and fast casual restaurants. Upon COVID-19 and black plight being highlighted, she was driven to explore how she could be impactful in the food industry outside of restaurants and further reform culinary culture. She was drawn to combating food waste and food insecurity because of her grandmother’s impetus for “waste not, want not” cuisine and community service. Growing up, her grandmother committed to visiting various homeless shelters with consistent food donations and started a food pantry at her local church in the Bronx, New York upon seeing the dire need for access to healthy food options. While participating in her grandmother’s initiatives, Courtney saw the importance of humanizing the under-served population, ensuring they felt seen despite their circumstances and feeding them meals that were good to them and for them. Around Courtney, err’body deserves to eat. She works to ensure equitable food resources, holistic wellness options, and arts and culinary educations are accessible and sustainable for the predominantly black and brown neighborhoods she was raised in and now calls home.

Lauren mitchell

Miami, FL

Co Founder

Food has always been the center of Lauren’s life. From standing under her mother watching as she prepared meals for their large family, to spending summers in Lakeland, Florida helping her grandmother tend the vegetable gardens, it was no wonder she pursued a career in the culinary world. Growing up with hospitable parents and grandparents, Lauren learned the importance of community and expressing care to loved ones over a warm meal. After graduating from culinary school at McFatter Technical Institute in 2015, working up the kitchen ladder at a small chain restaurant, she moved to DC to refine her skills at multiple fine dining establishments. Acknowledging the waste that goes on in the restaurant industry and being exposed to the displaced black community in DC, it became indisputable that Lauren would use her talents and family values to help create Err’body Eats. Her goal was to ensure healthy meal options with less disruption to the environment for those in need.