It was sort of strange to be celebrating the expansion of Martha’s Kitchen on Wednesday at the ribbon-cutting for the nonprofit’s new, larger facility on Story Road. After all, it’s not actually good news that food insecurity has become so bad that Martha’s Kitchen outgrew its headquarters on Willow Street long ago.
Last year, Martha’s Kitchen provided 2.4 million meals to people in five California counties, working with a network of more than 60 partner groups. Executive Director Bill Lee says that when the new multi-use facility’s kitchen is built out, it’ll be able to produce 7 million meals a year. Let’s hope the day that figure is required never arrives.
“Despite all our efforts, food insecurity continues to rise in our backyard,” Lee said. “With this new location, we will be able to meet that ever increasing need.”
Martha’s Kitchen Executive Director Bill Lee shows Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong the space where the nonprofit will build out a new kitchen at its facility on Story Road in San Jose on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Area News Group)
Martha’s Kitchen, which was founded in 1981, purchased the building at 749 Story Road for $7.5 million this summer and started serving meals there in September. Now that it’s in the new facility, Martha’s Kitchen is working to raise funds to cover the purchase as well as an additional $3 million to $5 million to design and construct the commercial kitchen.
The nonprofit ConXion to Community, which was founded in 1977 as the Center for Training & Careers, sold the building but will be leasing back part of the space for 10 years. Lee said an additional 2,220 square-foot office space with its own lobby and entrance is also available for lease.
A large crowd showed up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours of the new facility, including San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, San Jose City Councilmembers Bien Doan and David Cohen, Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong, Hollister City Councilmember Dolores Morales, Santa Clara Family Health Plan CEO Christine Tomcala and Drew Starbird, a professor of information systems and analytics at Santa Clara University, who produced the Hunger Index tracking food insecurity in Santa Clara County by zip code.
Mahan said the work that the staff and volunteers at Martha’s Kitchen do helps San Jose have a soul.
“A lot of big cities feel very immersible, very fast and scary and disconnected, but not San Jose,” he said. “We’re the smallest big city in the country and it’s because of institutions like Martha’s Kitchen — and community members and networks like the one in this room — who really deeply care and want to see everybody in our city treated with dignity.”
ORCHARD CITY BREWS: It’s Oktoberfest weekend in Campbell, with the 30th annual celebration filling Campbell Avenue on Saturday and Sunday. That means lots of bratwurst, plenty of beer and traditional and nontraditional tunes from the Zicke Zacke Band.
It also means a lot of traffic and parking headaches around downtown Campbell, but there’s no reason to get your lederhosen in a twist. Corinthian Transportation is providing a free shuttle to-and-from the festival from the Pruneyard parking garage. That doesn’t excuse anyone from having a designated driver, though.
Get all the details for the weekend — and prepurchase drink tickets — at www.campbelloktoberfest.com.
BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE: If you were at the Hammer Theatre Center in downtown San Jose on Wednesday, you might be able to say “I saw them back when” about the four recipients of the Leigh Weimers Emerging Artists Awards: songwriter and musician William Johnston; actor and singer Lauren Berling; opera singer Deborah Martínez Rosengaus; and artist Bernadette Fahmy, who creates amazing “paintings” with colored tissue paper.
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Unfortunately, there’s another name associated with the Hammer that we’ll soon have to say “I knew him when”: Chris Burrill announced Wednesday that he will be retiring as the venue’s executive managing director at the end of the year.
Burrill was hired by San Jose State in 2016 to manage the theater. I think he did a remarkable job in bringing the former San Jose Rep theater back to life with a combination of live theater and musical performances, along with popular video events like National Theater Live.
CLIMATE FOR CHANGE: Works/San Jose will screen the film, “Upstream, Downriver: Uniting for Water Justice,” Saturday as part of a closing reception for its exhibition, “Climate Interrelations Imaginative.”
The 12:30 p.m. event also will include a conversation with Cynthia Kaufman, author of “The Sea is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook,” as well as a talk with exhibition artists Lisa Gass, Josie Lepe, Sarah Loyola, kaory santillan bueno and curator Valentino Loyola. The gallery is inside Open San Jose at 38 S. Second St.
‘NO KINGS’ BUT ‘YES PORT-A-POTTIES’: Organizers of the “No Kings” rally set for noon Saturday at San Jose’s St. James Park — one of many planned in the Bay Area and nationwide — say that the crowd may be as big or bigger than the estimated 15,000 people who showed up in June.
If you were there in June, you know it was almost impossible to hear the speakers unless you were right by the McKinley statue, so 50501 San Jose, which is partnering with Indivisible San Jose, is working on getting a better sound system and portable toilets. The group’s GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $9,000 for its expenses — mostly in donations of $100 or less. Gosh, guess all that talk about Antifa and George Soros money is a myth.