When Britt Parnell moved to Baton Rouge, he didn’t know many people, so he spent his free time posting cooking content on TikTok. A self-taught home chef, Parnell became passionate about cooking while making meals for others during addiction treatment.
Eventually, Parnell put down roots and began dating his partner who works at a nonprofit that houses a community fridge. Operating on the principles of mutual aid, community fridges provide a place for people to leave surplus food for others to take freely.
“As soon as I found out [the fridges] existed, I went and I cooked like 40 portions of pasta at the nonprofit by the fridge; that was last year about this time,” said Parnell. “Then, my content journey led me to finding fulfillment and doing philanthropic content instead of recipe content.”
Every Sunday, Parnell has made it his mission to cook 50 restaurant quality meals and deliver them to his community fridge in Baton Rouge.
Since he started, Parnell has cooked more than 700 meals and reached 3 million people with his videos—a number that climbs higher every day.
“Most people are like you and like me; a couple years ago they didn’t even know that these existed. That’s sort of the whole goal,” said Parnell. “I feed 50 people every week, but that’s a really small drop in what I’m trying to do here, which is to get more people and more organizations and brands and bigger influencers involved.”
In order to prepare his meals, Parnell uses all the money he makes from TikTok’s Creator Fund and brand partnerships he’s been able to acquire on Instagram.
Cooking out of his home, Parnell’s kitchen doesn’t have any actual countertops, which makes it difficult to prepare such a large number of meals. He reached out to our Cambro Cares program for containers to streamline their process.
“We didn’t have equipment to do this sort of thing, so the big plastic containers have been so good for food storage and food transportation,” said Parnell.
We also noticed he was using a cardboard box to deliver his meals to the fridge and made sure he was equipped with Cam GoBoxes® and a Delivery GoBag® to keep his food secure and at safe temperatures during transport.
“It has just been amazing; Cambro’s been awesome,” said Parnell. “One of the hooks that we use for the videos is, ‘Why is he carrying all this stuff?’ I like to pack myself with as many things as possible and having the boxes and bags helps.”
Parnell maintains a fulltime job during the week but hopes to eventually start a nonprofit of their own where they can host community cooking classes and allow those in need to heat up their food.
For now, the best way you can support is by watching, liking, commenting and sharing Parnell’s TikTok and Instagram videos each week.
If you’d like to nominate an organization for our Cambro Cares program, please visit www.cambrocares.com.
AUTHOR: ADRIANA COCHRAN IS THE DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER AT CAMBRO.
