Food From The Hood: Salad Dressing that Does Something

Back when I was going to school at Cal Poly Pomona for my degree in Business Management, one of my instructors introduced me to a little company he served as an advisor to.

Food From the Hood.

Food From the Hood was started back in 1992 when some teachers and students at Crenshaw High School ripped out some of the weeds on the campus and started planting a garden. The business and science teachers thought it would be a good educational project, and the students started selling their harvest at the farmer's market. Half the net was to go to scholarships for the participating students.

Soon, they expanded their business to salad dressing. They started with just the "Straight Out' the Garden" Creamy Italian Dressing, but have since expanded to several other varieties, including Ranch and Honey Mustard.

Even though they've expanded, they haven't lost their essence--a student-run company that provides business experience and scholarships for students.

From their website:

To date, Food From the 'Hood has awarded over $140,000 in college scholarships to the student-managers. 77 program graduates have attended two-year or four-year colleges or technical schools. Student Managers have been accepted to colleges and universities throughout the nation including Cal State L.A, University of the Pacific, Pitzer College, Concordia University, Babson College, Howard University, San Diego State, Tuskegee Institute, Morehouse, Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, Cal Poly Pomona, Clark-Atlanta, University of North California, USC, Chapman University, and much more. 20 program graduates receives their college degree in 2000, with 5 of them entering postgraduate programs.

You can get Food From the Hood at most major grocery stores, or order it in three packs, six packs, or twelve packs from amazon by clicking on the dohickey up there.

And incidentally, don't let the low ratings on Amazon fool you into thinking this stuff tastes bad. If you click over and read the reviews that led to those ratings, you'll see they range from service issues (one guy didn't get his order from Amazon, so he rated the product low) to political issues (one guy thinks it's racist that this product helps black kids).