SAN JOSE — Martha’s Kitchen, whose food programs provide 200,000 meals a month, purchased a San Jose property in a deal that will enable it to meet rising demand and potentially buoy other nonprofits.
An affiliate of the soup kitchen paid about $7.5 million for a retail and industrial building at 749 Story Rd., across the street from Happy Hollow Zoo, documents filed on July 28 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office show. It will serve as the new Martha’s Kitchen site.
Martha’s Kitchen workers are seen inside the soup kitchen’s current operations at 311 Willow Street in San Jose. (Martha’s Kitchen)
Center for Training and Careers, which does business as ConXion, sold the Story Road property to the Martha’s Kitchen affiliate, county documents show. ConXion also signed a lease with its new landlord, leasing roughly 10,000 square feet from Martha’s Kitchen.
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The soup kitchen currently operates in the hall of the Sacred Heart Church site at 311 Willow St. in San Jose, south of the city’s downtown district. The new location is about 1.5 miles from the current site.
“We have grown so much. We are in pretty tight spaces where we are now,” said Bill Lee, CEO of Martha’s Kitchen. “We now serve five to six times the number of meals that we were serving during COVID. We are seeing a big increase in demand.”
Martha’s Kitchen scouted for a new location for about two years before it settled on the site that it found on Story Road.
“We will move all volunteers, storage, meal serving, and parking to the new Story Road location,” Lee said.
The first stage of the move should occur by late August or early September, he estimated.
Commercial real estate brokers Steve Zamudio of Colliers and James Viso and Derik Benson of Kidder Mathews helped to arrange the property purchase.
“It’s an outreach area for the community,” Zamudio said. “This location works really well for a nonprofit organization. Martha’s Kitchen can feed homeless persons out of that location.”
The soup kitchen believes the new Story Road location will benefit both the community and the nonprofit.
“For the future of Martha’s Kitchen, this is going to be great,” Lee said. “We can expand in the building, and we can grow as an organization.”
Other nonprofits will also be occupying part of the ConXion space, leaving somewhat more than 20,000 square feet available for the soup kitchen.
“This move allows us to stay in central San Jose,” Lee said. “A lot of our clients are near our new location, and we will still be able to serve everyone we are helping now.”
Buying a long-term site will also produce challenges for Martha’s Kitchen.
“Now we have to fundraise for the building we bought,” Lee said.
At least one other food-oriented Bay Area nonprofit has paved the way to future growth through real estate deals.
In 2022, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, a high-profile food bank, paid $37.5 million for a site at 4553 North First St., in north San Jose’s Alviso district that will serve as its future headquarters and food-handling center.
In June, Second Harvest paid $13 million for empty land next to the 4553 North First site to bolster future food-handling efforts.