Inside a nearly 100-year-old building on West 1st Avenue, construction crews are tearing up the floor to make way for Burrito Brigade’s newest project. For three years, the food access nonprofit has operated out of a rented space on West 6th Avenue. But, Jennifer Denson, Burrito Brigade’s executive director says the nonprofit had bigger dreams than its current, smaller-scale kitchen and pantry setup.
Last year, Burrito Brigade purchased the former CAT (Center for Appropriate Transport) building at 455 West 1st in the Whiteaker and now, it has started remodeling.
Denson says the Burrito Brigade wants to create a full-fledged community food hub, fit with a commercial kitchen and pantry where it can continue its work giving burritos to those in need on the street while at the same time, hosting cooking classes to help people experiencing food insecurity learn how to cook with what they’ve got.
Burrito Brigade will move locations once remodeling at the 1st Avenue building is completed.
The nonprofit hopes to open the newly purchased 8,699 square-foot building sometime in spring 2027. For now, Denson says renovating the building into a space that can handle a commercial-sized kitchen is the nonprofit’s biggest hurdle before opening. “I’m super excited for the future, and I’m super excited about what we can accomplish with this building, but it also is very scary because this is bigger space and more bills and, all of those things,” Denson says.
Burrito Brigade traces its beginnings back to 2014 when Denson saw a Facebook advertisement asking for volunteers to help make burritos over the weekend for the local homeless population. In a home in the Whiteaker, the group folded burritos every Sunday until a year later, it moved into a kitchen rented from Food For Lane County and a church. By this time, Denson had become the executive director of the nonprofit.
Burrito Brigade formed with one mission in mind: Feed the hungry through community-powered food access programs. “We believe food is a human right,” Denson says. “There’s enough food that is being tossed that could feed so many people and we just want to have people have access to food without barriers, without income requirements.”
Construction started at the West 1st Avenue building on Oct. 13 and already, crews have dug out the concrete floors to make way for water lines, electrical infrastructure and more. According to Burrito Brigade, the historic building was originally constructed next to rail lines for “agricultural packing, cold storage, lumber and building material distribution and freight transfer.”
On the bottom floor, the building is separated into two large open spaces. On the left side, Denson says the nonprofit will build its “waste-to-taste” hall, where food that is set to be discarded is repurposed to feed those in need.
Burrito Brigade partners with several local restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries and more to collect the food and make it available to the community at no cost. Denson says having a larger space dedicated to the waste-to-taste program will allow the nonprofit to offer a wider variety of free options to the community.
On the right side of the building, Burrito Brigade is building the full-scale commercial kitchen. Denson says the kitchen won’t just be for making burritos, but also for cooking classes and a space for other local community food access groups, like Food Not Bombs, to use as a preparation hub.
Upstairs is an office space that Denson and her staff will use to conduct administrative tasks like scheduling, networking and more.
Currently, the nonprofit is working with the city of Eugene for a grant on its waste-to-taste and educational programs. Denson says she’s grateful that the community is so supportive of Burrito Brigade. The nonprofit has only four full time employees and anywhere between 70 and 80 volunteers each week.
Burrito Brigade won Eugene Weekly’s best program for the homeless and Denson won best nonprofit leader in the 2026 Best of Eugene reader’s poll.
While on the outside, it might look like the nonprofit has a ways to go to get the building, built in 1930, into shape for a full-scale kitchen, Denson says she’s confident the nonprofit will have the building operational by spring. She adds that she can’t believe the progress the nonprofit has made so far.
“If you had told me in the beginning of COVID, when we started the small waste-to-taste grocery store in a church, I don’t know if I could think of buying a building five or six years down the line,” Denson says.
Now, in five years, Denson says she hopes the nonprofit will be able to upscale its street outreach programs while at the same time, having a stable community food hub where people in need exercise their right to food.
For more information on Burrito Brigade and its new building, visit BurritoBrigade.org.