The Jacques Pépin Foundation’s 90/90 Celebration Campaign was a nationwide fundraiser in honor of Chef Jacques Pépin’s 90th birthday. Jacques is widely regarded as the greatest culinary educator of our time. He’s a master chef, teacher, author of 35+ cookbooks, and public television icon whose career spans decades of shaping how Americans cook and eat.
Ten years ago, Jacques and his family decided to transform this educational legacy into enduring social impact through the Jacques Pépin Foundation (JPF). The Foundation advances hands-on culinary training for adults facing barriers to employment, pairing world-class technique with access, dignity, and opportunity. JPF is singular in its mission: it is the only chef-founded organization focused exclusively on adult learners and serves as a national backbone for community-based culinary training programs across the country.
The 90/90 campaign featured 90 (!) events that brought chefs, home cooks, and supporters together to raise funds and awareness for the JPF’s mission: expanding access to culinary education, supporting community kitchens, and empowering individuals through cooking skills. This size and scale of the series has never been attempted before - nor successfully completed - in the hospitality industry.
The goals were: to raise awareness about our mission nationally; to fund a “reach” goal of $2M to expand the Community Kitchen Support program; to preserve and extend Jacques’ legacy; to connect chefs with Community Kitchens to foster lasting local impact; and to inspire home cooks to create community around their tables, expanding food literacy through the transformational power of cooking.
The small but mighty JPF team curated 90 events hosted by the country’s most renowned chefs featuring menus inspired by Jacques’ recipes and techniques. They strategically organized the geography of restaurant locations with Community Kitchen partners to facilitate local connections and to reach top markets for existing donors and to cultivate new audiences. To hit the goal of 90 events, the team was building the plane while flying it: pitching chefs to participate while starting to host events as the list grew and events were scheduled.
The JPF team built a robust Chef Toolkit with assets, graphics and signage, customizable menu templates painted by Jacques, talking points about the JPF mission, PR tips and support, sample run of shows, production timelines, standardized photo and video shot lists, and suggested social media copy. They facilitated sponsored products to help offset hard costs for the restaurants and to expose brands to top chefs and restaurateurs. Personalized printed programs were shipped to each venue so guests would have a take-home collateral piece about the organization.
Notable gatherings include a kick-off dinner at Michelin-starred Gramercy Tavern with Danny Meyer and Chef Mike Anthony (New York City), a Sunday Soirée at Michelin-starred Restaurant Daniel with Chef Daniel Boulud (New York City), Milwaukee’s largest dine-around chef event, dinner at Andrew Zimmern’s private studio kitchen (Minneapolis), 10 events in the Napa Valley area, including dinner at The French Laundry hosted by Chef Thomas Keller, farm dinners in Kentucky and Connecticut, six events hosted at Community Kitchens, including EDWINS, the subject of an Oscar nominated documentary film (Cleveland), numerous chef collabs and culinary reunion dinners, and many more.
The JPF also executed a Home Cook Celebration portion of the campaign, encouraging donors to host their own celebrations in Jacques’ honor. These dinners created community around the table and inspired people to cook, and ultimately expanded food literacy and strengthened connections through the joy of cooking together. Between May-December 2025, 41 Home Cook Celebrations took place: one every 9 days. Those who signed up to host Home Cook Celebrations gained access to the Home Cook Toolkit, complete with invitation templates featuring the 90/90 campaign branding, menu borders designed by Jacques featuring his signature artwork, and discounts to brand partners like S. Pellegrino, HINE Cognac, and Frank Family Vineyards.
Additionally, throughout the year, key virtual events were included to provide accessibility and approachability for anyone to learn new culinary techniques and tips. Notable chefs and culinary personality hosts included Gail Simmons, Jacques Torres, Paola Velez, Camari Mick, and Justin Chapple.
Towards the end of the campaign, the team launched a digital marketing campaign where guests could sign a 90th birthday card for Jacques. We leveraged complimentary ad space and earned media to spread the word about the Foundation and the far-reaching campaign efforts.
Funding came from ticket revenue, Home Cook dinner donations, corporate sponsorship, auctions, digital fundraising, and general donations – raising $300,000 more than the initial $2M goal.
The series reached 7,200+ guests, featured 317 chefs across the country, and raised $2.3M, surpassing the initial “reach” fundraising goal.
The largest in-person event had 400+ guests and featured 20+ NYC chefs at a tasting reception, the penultimate event before Jacques Pépin’s Official 90th Birthday Bash on 12/18/25. The smallest event was an intimate dinner for 10 in Chef Rick Bayless’ private home. In addition to benefit dinners, there were brunches, a guided tour of Chinatown, a birthday cake showcase by the Bay Area’s top pasty chefs, and an oyster hatchery tour in Maine. Events were hosted in 28 states and 53 cities, including 6 hosted by Community Kitchen grantees. 39 events had grantee representatives in attendance, furthering partnerships with local chefs and donors. Some dates had concurrent events in different cities. The 4 virtual events received over 700 attendees and there were 41 Home Cook Celebrations. We sent nearly 4,000 individual thank you emails and expanded our donor base by 150%. We received 112 press mentions, including several articles in The New York Times, and 411,443,622 total impressions. This size and scale of the series has never been attempted before - nor successfully completed - in the hospitality industry.
The impact of this monumental campaign will drive positive change by investing in equitable access to culinary education and supporting workforce development programs to ensure culinary knowledge is shared and endures, economic opportunity expands, and communities grow stronger through the transformational power of cooking.
