Before Souper Jenny opens on Tuesday mornings, the Westside restaurant becomes a small assembly line. Volunteers bring large containers of soup from the cooler, ladle it into quart tubs, close the lids and pack the containers for pickup, CBS Atlanta reported Oct. 6. In a typical week, the Zadie Project distributes about 1,000 quarts through schools and community organizations across metro Atlanta, the station reported.
The nonprofit’s current program page lists seasonal soup preparation and packaging at Souper Jenny Westside on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from August through May. Partner organizations collect their allotments at prearranged times and distribute them to the people they serve. The page says the soup selection changes with the season and available produce. The weekly schedule connects one restaurant kitchen with organizations already serving families in their communities. Souper Jenny says employees and volunteers cook and deliver the soup.
CBS reported that roughly 10 to 15 people rotate through the volunteer effort. Longtime volunteer Kathleen Petrie told the station she began in 2020 and recalled one Tuesday shift growing from roughly 400 or 500 quarts to more than 800. Those figures describe one packaging shift; the roughly 1,000 quarts figure is the project’s typical weekly distribution across its partner network.
Jenny Levison started the Zadie Project in 2016 and named it for her father, CBS reported. Souper Jenny’s current project page explains that “Zadie” was his family nickname and means grandfather in Yiddish. Levison told CBS she wanted community service to be part of the restaurant’s everyday business instead of relying only on occasional contributions. Her father’s example of giving back influenced the project’s start.
Customers can also take part through a meal program tied to one of the restaurant’s dishes. Souper Jenny says that starting Dec. 1, 2016, each bowl of its My Dad’s Turkey Chili bought at one of its cafes prompted a nutritious meal donation to an Atlanta family. The restaurant’s stated goal is 2,000 meals a week. That goal counts meals, while CBS’s typical-week figure counts quarts of soup, so the two totals measure different things.
At Benjamin Banneker High School in College Park, the SAFE Center offers a specific place where the soup is available. CBS reported that the center keeps containers in a refrigerator inside a free store stocked with groceries and other necessities. The store is open to the entire school, and students typically shop there on Fridays, before the weekend, when free school breakfast and lunch are not available. The arrangement puts prepared food alongside other practical resources in a familiar school setting.
SAFE Center administrative assistant Tifanie Bishop told CBS that soup can be useful for families who move often or lack stable housing because it needs little more than heating. Her explanation points to a practical feature of the food: it is ready to warm and eat, without requiring a complicated preparation process.
The project also describes education programs in urban farming and sustainable eating. Its program page says hands-on experiences can take place at the Souper Farm or at schools and community centers. These classes add a learning component to the meal work, giving participants opportunities to explore food and growing as well as receive prepared soup.
Souper Jenny’s project page reported more than 220,000 quarts donated as of July 2026. That is a cumulative figure across the project’s history, not a weekly count. It reflects years of recurring work by the restaurant’s employees and volunteers, with partner organizations collecting food for distribution in their communities.
Levison told CBS she does not view the project as a solution to hunger on its own. She described a more immediate aim: a prepared quart can provide dinner for someone who might otherwise go without. The work follows that modest, practical route from a restaurant kitchen to a community organization and, in places such as Benjamin Banneker’s SAFE Center, to a school free store where families can find food alongside other necessities.
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