Following a successful Give BIG Green Bay campaign in February, Rooted In has entered a new phase of growth.
Founder Selena Darrow has been named CEO, and Alex Galt has joined Rooted In as director of programs.
As part of this momentum, Rooted In has moved into a new commercial kitchen space in Green Bay, accelerating its ability to recover surplus food, produce individually packaged meals, and strengthen partnerships that improve access to nutritious food.
For the past two and a half years, Rooted In has operated with significant constraints. Food was stored across multiple locations, and meals were prepared during monthly cooking sessions in a non-commercial kitchen, requiring extensive setup, long production days, and full breakdown after each use.
The new kitchen changes that.
“This move helps us do the work in a way that finally makes sense,” said Darrow. “We’ve been proving the model. Now we have the infrastructure and the team to scale it.”
In 2025, Rooted In recovered more than 32,000 pounds of surplus food, transforming it into over 5,500 individually packaged, nutritious meals shared across the community through key food access partners.
With a dedicated kitchen, attached storage, walk-in cooler and freezer, and transportation access, Rooted In can now operate more consistently and efficiently. Food, equipment, and packaging are centralized, allowing meals to move into the community faster and more reliably.
“We’ll be able to bring more people into the work, more often,” Darrow said. “Not just to help, but to understand the impact firsthand.”
In addition, the kitchen enables the implementation of Rooted In’s culinary education programming, grounded in a Food is Medicine approach and focused on evidence-based curriculum, practical cooking skills, nutrition, and long-term behavior change.
“These are not just cooking classes,” Darrow said. “This is about helping people nourish themselves and their families in ways that work in real life and inspire long-term behavior change.”
