Peace, Love and Food
The husband-and-wife chef team of Greg Kelly and Danielle Giusti first discovered the Mexican fishing village of Punta Mita while traveling with family nearly 20 years ago. The idyllic mountain and ocean vistas, friendly locals, laidback lifestyle and amazing waves have drawn Greg and Danielle, both from New Jersey, back to the coastal community regularly over the past two decades. When Danielle sought refuge in their Punta Mita condo at the outset of the pandemic in 2020, she saw their beloved neighbors struggling when their tourism-driven economy ground to a halt. Greg and Danielle stepped up to help their community as only chefs know how – by serving peace, love and food (paz, amor y comida), the primary ingredients of their humanitarian effort named the Punta Mita Project.
Feeding children comes naturally to Greg and Danielle. Greg is the President of Simplified Culinary Services, a New Jersey-based K-12 school nutrition and foodservice company which he founded in 1996. Danielle works side-by-side with Greg as the Foodservice Director in their family-owned business. The couple spends the duration of each American school year in cafeterias designing, preparing and serving nutritious meals and promoting healthy lifestyles to students.
For more than seven years, Greg and Danielle have been spending their off seasons in Mexico enjoying the surf, the serenity and the simple life with locals. But, since the summer of 2020, they’ve added another task to their daily routines in Punta Mita. Each day, they migrate to a local kitchen to prepare and serve meals to children in need.
When the pandemic struck in early 2020, Greg stayed in New Jersey to keep his business running and continue providing meals to children at the few schools in his portfolio that remained open, while Danielle headed to their condo in Mexico since the school she worked at had closed. During their long-distance conversations, Greg and Danielle compared notes about how each country and their local communities were faring, and there was great disparity.
In the United States, unemployment benefits appeared plentiful and, for the most part, Greg saw children and families getting the food they needed. Whereas Danielle witnessed the Punta Mita economy shut down as tourism suspended instantaneously, and indefinitely. Even in the best of economic times, when tourism is bustling, many people in the village found it difficult to provide nutritious meals for their families. But in the wake of the pandemic, and without access to unemployment benefits, stimulus checks or federally funded school nutrition programs, many families struggled to put food on the table.
“The Punta Mita Project was born out of economic necessity,” recalled Greg. “It just made sense that if we were going to give back at some point in our life, this was the time. Using our experience as chefs to start up a food kitchen seemed like a very natural way to lend support. So, we decided that we would put a program together and see how the locals accept us.”
Any underlying skepticism about this generous couple’s motivation washed away as quickly as the tide, and the community immediately embraced the work Greg and Danielle were doing, and the children loved the food.
Naturally, there were early challenges as Danielle sought a space to operate their free meal program and recruited staff and volunteers to support the project. Back home, Greg familiarized himself with what he describes as the uncomfortable task of asking for funds to get the project up and running. But, after talking with other humanitarians and studying YouTube videos and Ted Talks, Greg found his sea legs and learned to ride a new kind of wave.
“Eventually I realized that I’m not just asking for money; I’m giving someone who is offering money the opportunity to support something important,” said Greg of the fundraising side of the Punta Mita Project. “It took some time to get comfortable with it, but there are people out there giving and if you don’t ask you won’t get, so you have to ask.”
In the first year of the Punta Mita Project, Danielle found a great space to rent from another non-profit that ticked all the boxes; it had fresh water, electricity, shade and a central location. The pair was committed to sourcing local products where possible and Danielle made connections with local producers of tortillas, crepes, bakery items and fruits and vegetables. She also bought a vehicle so that she could travel to nearby Puerta Vallarta to purchase and transport whatever they couldn’t buy at a reasonable price locally.
“We thought if we could support not only the kids, which in turns supports the parents because they don’t have to buy the meals, but also the local vendors as much as we can, that would be beneficial for the town,” said Greg.
With the logistics and operational components of the business in place, Greg arrived in Punta Mita in June of 2020, and he and Danielle got to doing what they do best: cooking great food.
“There were parts of the business that didn’t come naturally to us, but good food is good food,” explained Greg. “Give us gas and knives and cutting boards and raw ingredients, that’s right in our wheelhouse. That part was simple for us, that’s what we do.”
For the first three years, the Punta Mita Project was a summer passion for Greg and Danielle. They would move their foodservice operation to Mexico at the end of each school year and provide meals to the children of Punta Mita throughout July and a few weeks in August. 2023 marked a significant expansion of their mandate, as they partnered with a local school and hired and trained staff to deliver meals to children throughout the year.
While the local schools offer basic nutritional support to students, it is limited, and parents have to pay for the food. The Punta Mita Project began serving healthy, free meals to students beginning in August 2023, with the hope of improving retention, engagement and performance in the classroom, as well as overall attendance.
“We moved all of our equipment into the local school kitchen and set up everything there to feed children during the school day,” said Greg. “We currently offer meals every Tuesday and Thursday for the entire school year, and all students are welcome to participate.”
There are 140 students enrolled in the school and approximately 120 children eat each service day. The Punta Mita Project also hired a manager and three food service workers, all local Mexican women. It was important for Greg and Danielle to hire women because empowering females is another crucial component of their initiative.
As the Punta Mita Project entered its fourth season of operation, Greg approached Rich’s, a long-time supplier of what he says is the best self-rising sheeted pizza dough on the market, to come onboard as a program sponsor.
“Even though their personal business in the United States suffered losses during the pandemic, Greg and Danielle – chefs, business owners and humanitarians – recognized a need and rolled up their sleeves to be part of the solution,” said Kevin Aman, Vice President, Community Engagement, Rich Products. “They leveraged their skills and expertise to offer regular, nutritious meals to children in their community and relieve some of the economic burden on families in Punta Mita. Rich’s is very pleased to be a small part of their extraordinary efforts.”
Greg and Danielle have served more than 25,000 meals since the Punta Mita Project was founded in 2020. They have also organized beach clean-ups, pothole repairs and town-wide trash clean-ups.
“This work fills our hearts in a way that we haven’t felt before,” acknowledged Greg. “We come back to the US at the end of a long summer of serving and despite the fact that it’s hot and it’s hard physical work, we’re reenergized and we’re rejuvenated and ready to tackle another school year here at home.”
To learn more about the Punta Mita Project and support this effort, visit PuntaMitaProject.org.
