Putting food on the table and a roof overhead for needy New Yorkers

In January, The New York Post reported that a Park Slope food pantry and soup kitchen was being "overwhelmed" by an influx of migrants that had "wreaked havoc" on the nonprofit's capacity. The pantry in question was the Community Help in Park Slope, also known as CHIPS, which local church members started in 1971. Today, with a budget of $1.8 million, the nonprofit serves thousands of longtime and newcomer New Yorkers, not only offering three meals a day and bags stuffed with pantry goods but also housing new moms and their kids in nine studio apartments above their food services in the building CHIPS owns on Fourth Avenue. New York Nonprofit Media spoke with Peter Endriss, CHIPS' executive director since last year, about how he transitioned from being an engineer to a baker to his current position – and how he oversees the feeding of hundreds of people daily, six days a week.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Peter, thanks for talking to us. Tell us about a typical day.

I live with my husband near Union Square. I usually get up around seven, have a cup of tea and prepare my lunch, which is usually a salad. Maybe I'll scan emails if I'm feeling particularly frisky. Then I'm out the door and I go to Ole & Steen, a Danish bakery, and pick up leftover pastries from them to take to CHIPS. I think in the second half of last year they gave me more than $20,000 worth of pastries.

Then I take the subway to CHIPS, where there's usually a bunch of folks lined up for breakfast even though we don't open until nine. So I say hi to the folks on the line and then to Matt the chef and Pauline, the director of food services. Then I head upstairs to my office and check my schedule for the day, start going through emails and my various to-do lists, whatever projects are going on that week. 

Today's a good example: I came in and responded to our healthcare broker with another report they needed for last year's healthcare audit. Then I followed up with our director of volunteers because we have a volunteer data analyst who wanted to understand our food intake system better, to help us use data to tell our story better. Then I got back to a donor who is running a marathon and wants to support CHIPS with it, so we're creating a landing page for his fundraising drive. Then I hopped on my bike and met the parent coordinator of an elementary school in Bed-Stuy about making them a possible stop for our pantry van. 

Then I came back and was notified that someone who goes through our garbage leaves dirty diapers on our windowsill. So I could be reviewing a strategic plan or fixing a toilet on any given day, which is perfect for me, because I'm kind of antsy. If I had to sit all day doing emails and reports, I think I'd go crazy.

Can you give us some bio that shows how you got to your present position?

I was born and grew up on Long Island. I always wanted to be in food service. As a kid, for a school project, I made a diorama of a restaurant I wanted to open when I was older. By 13 or 14, I was a busboy, then I worked in the school dining hall and different restaurants all through college. Partly through my father, who is German and was always taking us to formal dinner parties with other Germans, I came to appreciate the art of entertainment, like setting up a cheese plate. But by college I knew several people in the restaurant industry, and they all told me how horrible it is, that it's not a great lifestyle.

So after college at Cornell, I went to grad school to pursue engineering. I got a job on a construction site as the safety engineer – the guy everyone yells back at when he tells you to put your hardhat on. Then I got a job doing engineering reports for bank loans and went back to school at night to get my masters in civil engineering. After that, I got a job as part of a team doing bridge inspections. It was so horribly boring that I gave notice after one year and went back to working in various restaurants. My husband and I lived in Italy for two years for his job, during which I wrote a business plan for my future bakery, Runner and Stone, which refers to the two millstones that grind flour. I partnered with my husband's cousin, who's a chef, and opened Runner and Stone in 2012, a block away from CHIPS.

Then someone from CHIPS told me that they were doing a fundraiser where local restaurants would give 15% of one day’s revenue to CHIPS. I helped organize that, then ended up helping them organize their gala from 2016 on. Within a few months of that, they asked me to join their board, which I did from 2014 to 2021. By then, I'd had enough of bakery and restaurant ownership and wanted a better work/life balance. So I pretty much gave the business to my business partner. Then, last year, the executive director of CHIPS gave notice after two years, so I took the chance and applied for the position – and got it, starting June of last year.

Can you give us an overview of what CHIPS provides?

We have three lines of service. One is our women's shelter, which is nine studio apartments above the soup kitchen. It's for moms in their third trimester or with children up to the age of three. The second line is the food service program, where we serve breakfast, lunch and a post-lunch cold meal Monday through Saturday to anyone who comes to the door. And the third line is our pantry program where we give out shelf-stable items and the client's choice of fruits and vegetables on Thursdays and Saturdays. Also, last November, we started a mobile pantry van that goes to different sites like P.S. 124 and the Gowanus Houses.

Overall, we serve about 300 to 400 people a day – which is about 200 breakfasts, 400 lunches and 50 post-lunch sandwiches, while our pantry program distributes about 100-120 bags each day, with the mobile van distributing about 150 bags per week. We have eight fulltime and 16 part-time employees, with about half of the part-time employees being overnight receptionists for our residents. We also have about 150 volunteers coming to us per week. A little more than half our funding is from individuals, with the remaining from a combination of private foundations, local businesses and community groups, and then about 15-20% from government funding.

So the New York Post piece said that CHIPS was "overwhelmed" by migrants. True?

"Overwhelmed" makes it sound like we haven't been able to keep up, but in fact we've just been able to – hanging by a thread in terms of the amount of food we can provide. Before COVID, about 100 to 120 people were dining in with us, then once COVID happened, we immediately transferred to takeaway and the numbers started climbing and have led to the numbers we have today. But we've been able to keep up with it by changing how we manage the line and also partnering with another nonprofit, Rethink Foods, which provides us with 200 meals in hotel trays three times a week, which supplements our in-house cooking. So our chef will cook 200-300 meals and we'll heat up 200-300 meals from Rethink. And we have more staff.

Do you know what percent of your guests/clients are relatively newcomer migrants?

We only have data going back to October, so it's hard to know how many people are new. But our demographic has definitely changed. It used to be predominantly Black and now it's more than 50% Hispanic. We also have a lot of Russian speakers on the line now since the war in Ukraine started. There's also three shelters within one block of us – two for single men and one for families that is almost exclusively South American families.

What skills do you think you've honed up to this point that are your strong suits in your current job?

Customer management and staff management. And by customer management I mean not just our guests but also our volunteers and our funders. They all want to know what we're doing. So, for me, no question is too small or unreasonable for someone to ask me. Then there's the staff management, which I'm used to from the restaurant industry, where you're working with all different ethnicities, nationalities and income and education levels. The bakery I coowned was tiny and there could be three people in there when it was 110 degrees. I'd be standing there with someone with a master's degree and someone who'd just come to America six months ago. So making sure that everyone understands each other and works together to focus on the task at hand takes a lot of emotional intelligence.

What skills do you need to keep working on?

I don't have a great understanding of how money flows through local government yet. So, I have to rely heavily on my coworkers when it comes to grants. I have to study anew every time I do a grant because [how to do it] just doesn't stay in my brain.

What are you proudest of, so far, in your time at CHIPS?

That the staff seems to work better together since I came on. That's a direct result of the fact that I've done everything myself from dishwasher and breaking down boxes to being the person who reconciles the books every month. I feel like my staff knows that I understand and value what they do on a day-to-day basis.

Are any elements of CHIPS new since you arrived?

The idea for the pantry van started when I was on the board but it never developed. When I became ED, they were like, "Make it happen." I was the one who went to the car dealership and picked up the van. And because my bakery set up at farmers' markets for seven years, I'm not afraid of setting up tents and tables and understanding how to set up an off-site distribution. This past Friday we just started a new van stop and served 180 households in 45 minutes. It's truly amazing that the staff I walked into, when I came on, got that together. I left that skipping!

What are your goals for CHIPS in the next three years?

We're in the middle of a strategic planning process right now, and one of the decisions we have to make is whether CHIPS starts to reduce services or expand its space. We're bursting at the seams. Most of us favor expanding the space. So we'll probably begin scouting for an additional space.

What do you do for self-care when you're not working?

I do yoga and swim and cycle, and my husband and I ski in the winter. Most of our social life is getting together with friends for dinners, in both restaurants and our homes. I love cooking, mostly Italian food like eggplant parmigiana and various pasta dishes. Asian dishes are my favorite but I don't cook them. I could get ramen for every single meal every single day. I also love Vietnamese. My favorite restaurant is Hanoi House on St. Mark's Place in the East Village.

What is it about your job that is most gratifying to you?

I really love it when people are nice to each other. I love that I get to come into a workplace where a bunch of staff and volunteers are all here for the same purpose, working together and happy to be helping other human beings. The level of grace that our staff shows daily to what can be a difficult population, for obvious reasons, is really inspiring to me. That's my shot in the arm every day.