City Fresh Foods is a Black owned foodservice business based in Roxbury, MA. The family-owned business was recently awarded a contract to provide meals to almost 50,000 Boston Public School students starting on July 1.
Sheldon Lloyd is the CEO of City Fresh Foods. He started the company with the goal to provide nutritious, fresh meals to seniors and minorities in the Boston area.
“This is the community feeding the community right here, many of my cooks are going to be feeding their own,” Lloyd said. “We make diverse food, so you have the flavors of the community.”
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced the $17 million contract is the largest non-construction contract the city has ever issued to a certified Black-owned business.
“[This is a] long time coming,” Lloyd said at the press conference. “Twenty-eight years ago, City Fresh began around the corner on Dudley Street — 1,200-square-foot kitchen with less than 10 employees delivering a couple hundred meals a day. And look at City Fresh now. We produce and deliver thousands of meals every day to residents of the city of Boston and we have a team of 160 locals.”
“City Fresh is building a state-of-the-art institutional foodservice production plant in the heart of Roxbury to provide critical nutrition and flavor to even more children and families in the Greater Boston community for years to come,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd, whose own children are in BPS, said his goal has always been to hire straight from the community and now calls the chance to feed the children of the Boston Public Schools a full-circle moment.
“The mission was to hire local and feed local, hire younger and serve the older community,” Lloyd said. “We were selected because we are from Boston, we had the best proposal, we know the city well and we have a special connection to the community because we are a reflection of the community.”
Cover photo by Morgan C. Mullings
