About Us.

Our Mission.

Soul Food is a student-driven organization at Queen’s University founded in 2007 by Sheri Krell and Tyler Peikes. We are dedicated to alleviating food insecurity in the Kingston community through providing food to local shelters, increasing awareness about food insecurity, and encouraging responsible food practices.

What We Do.

We are a student-run organization that delivers unconsumed food from Queen’s University campus cafeterias to local Kingston Shelters.

With the help of our volunteers, Soul Food is able to collect and deliver unused food from Leonard, Ban Righ & West Campus cafeterias to various local shelters every night.

We are also focused on increasing public awareness about food insecurity, promoting responsible food consumption and waste alleviation, and building relationships within the Kingston community, in the hopes of positively impacting poverty and food insecurity.

Soul Food’s initiatives create an effective way of gaining first-hand exposure to the impact conscious food consumption can make within a community.

Our Chapters.

Soul Food is currently at Queen’s University, but we are looking to expand this awesome program! Contact us if you are interested in starting a chapter at your University!

Our History

In 2007, then third-year Queen's students Sheri Krell and Tyler Peikes wanted to find a new way for students to support the homeless community in Kingston. Having noticed that there was plenty of food left unserved at Queen's cafeterias at the end of each day and having talked to local shelters, food banks and soup kitchens to assess their needs, Krell and Peikes came up with an idea. With the help of Sodexho and Queen's Hospitality Services, Krell and Peikes created Soul Food, whose main goal was, and still is, to transport the unserved food from Queen's cafeterias to shelters throughout the larger community. The project helped strengthen town-gown relations for, in the words of Tyler Peikes, "In working to make a difference outside the Queen's community, we also made a difference within! We brought people together. We built a community within a community."4 This good work did not go unnoticed: for her part in starting Soul Food, Sheri Krell has recently been honoured by Queen's University during the most recent Initiative Campaign. 

16 years later, Soul Food is still going strong. We now deliver unserved food from all three Queen's cafeterias to four shelters throughout the city, relying on roughly 60 student volunteers and many members of the local community. Our service has permitted some of these shelters to decrease their food budgets by thousands of dollars, freeing up those funds for other projects. The cafeterias also benefit by being able to reduce their waste or become more environmentally friendly. Since 2010, we have begun coordinating volunteers for Martha's Table, a low-cost restaurant, and take on a greater role in spreading awareness about issues of poverty and hunger through our forum series. 

Very recently, we transformed into a not-for-profit, and hope soon to attain charity status. The structure of a NFP lends stability to Soul Food, as our Executive Committee and volunteer delivery teams witness a near constant turn-over of student volunteers. Our new Board of Directors provides oversight so as to ensure that Soul Food grows fruitfully and continues to serve our community's needs, and, hopefully, will expand to serve the needs of your community as well.