An Arizona chef is connecting food as medicine — and feeding cancer patients with the Joy Bus

Jennifer Caraway is a celebrated chef and "Chopped" champion whose career has been built around a singular mission: to uplift cancer patients through food.

It’s manifested in the Joy Bus, a nonprofit that delivers meals to homebound cancer patients. It all began for her when her friend, Joy, was battling cancer, and Caraway brought her food to feed her body and soul. Joy passed away in 2012.

Ever since, Caraway has been dedicated to the cause, building up the Joy Bus, which now serves patients all over the state. Now, she’s out with the first cookbook, "The Joy Bus Cookbook: Meals That Matter." It hits bookstores later this month.

Full conversation

JENNIFER CARAWAY: So really, I just started because I wanted face time with my friend and she had a lot of people around her that gave her everything she needed during that time in her life when she was going through treatment. So my bribe basically was like, “Here's pretty food, can I spend time with you?”

And it was one of those days that I was sitting outside of her house crying because I always tried to not cry in front of her so that I was somehow inspiring her, not bringing her down, that I thought, well, maybe there's a service that exists that I can call and deliver food to her or her family when I'm not able to do it. And when I couldn't find something, then I decided to create it and that's kind of how the Joy Bus was born.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, and her name was Joy obviously. So thinking about food in this giving way and transitioning to what you did in restaurants to nonprofit status, what did that look like? There must have been some challenges in that. 

CARAWAY: Yeah, I'm kind of crazy. Like, “why would you open a nonprofit and a restaurant?” Like two of the literally zero margined careers that exist on this planet. But it made sense. I mean, I started the nonprofit. It took about two years to get our 501(c)(3) certification. I was delivering from my home for the first three years and then it was kind of cute because Phoenix magazine found out what we were doing. And they were like, “we're going to put you in this spread, this two-page spread showing what you're doing for the community.” And I was like, “oh God, like I have a job. I have three jobs and they have no idea what I'm doing. If they see that spread, I'm going to be fired.”

So I had proposed to my board, “look, we're going to need to rent a commercial kitchen. Like I'm making it out of my home where we've grown so quickly over the past few years, but we need a commercial kitchen, so we're gonna incur the cost of the lease regardless, so why not open it to the public, have a full service restaurant, and then have 100% of the proceeds fund the program.”

Now I was surrounded by very smart people, so they thought that was a terrible idea. And, you know, they're smart people, but this is really like this restaurant industry that's my life. It's like one thing I do know how to do. So they finally agreed, we got the keys to a new space and then we started building it out and we got it right on the deadline. I think Sept. 15 was when the article was going to come out in 2015. And it was like the 13th. I was like, “OK, hey guys, like I'm gonna have to resign now. This is what we're doing.”

GILGER: “I'm doing this instead.” So it became your entire career, which is quite a leap. Talk a little bit about expanding it at the beginning like you had your friend and you were bringing her food. But how did you find other people? What was the reaction like from those folks? 

CARAWAY: Well, as soon as I decided that I was gonna jump and go forward with it, I found a Case Management Society of America meeting, and I had asked them if I could come speak to their case managers and explain what I wanted to do. And so it was me going into this conference and speaking, and immediately they sent me two people. It was funny because it was like one in Buckeye and one in Mesa. I'm like, “OK, cool, I got this.”

And being, by the way, you know, I'm a single mom at that time. Not only am I working my job at European Imports, but I'm also doing banquets at the Biltmore Hotel in the evening, and I'm working for a Jewish caterer on the weekends. So my week was very packed, but it worked. We had two clients and then another few weeks we had five clients and then 10. And by the time we were transitioning into the diner, we had about 50 clients at that point.

GILGER: Wow, so this grew fast, and these are folks going through cancer treatment in a really tough time in their lives. How did you see food help them? 

CARAWAY: You know, that's very interesting because to me, food was love. When I'm sad, I want to eat, when I'm happy, I want to eat. I didn't necessarily look at it as medicine, not like I do now aggressively so, but it was just to bring comfort and happiness.

And then I started self-teaching just on the benefits of healthy eating and why you should eat turmeric or how ginger helps with nausea. And so I just began to aggressively educate myself on the benefits of food as medicine.

GILGER: Yeah. OK, so give us a few examples of this because you look at these recipes and it doesn't seem like this is like a health food cookbook in that way, but it genuinely is meant to be for people who are, who are actively fighting a disease. Talk a little bit about some of your favorites and some of the ways in which you use that philosophy of food as medicine through this. 

CARAWAY: Yeah, well, a simple one that we have in there is a turmeric and blood orange hydrator. So we're trying to basically help the client understand that just with this one little shot of blood orange and turmeric, you're getting Vitamin C and you're getting all of this hydration that you need. There's a lot of turmeric, there's a lot of ginger in everything, but we tried to do a nice healthy mix of comforting food and good for you food.

GILGER: Is there a dish that you remember making for Joy when this first started?

CARAWAY: Yes. Our lamb and sweet potato meatballs were phenomenal, and she really loved them. And the cool thing about those is the lamb's not as strong as a goat, but the sweet potatoes themselves, which have tons of nutrients in them, act as a binder, so you're not having to add any additional gluten in there. And cheese. We used to make ice creams for her that she loved.

GILGER: Let me ask you just the scope of this, right? You opened a restaurant a decade ago initially and now you have a new one opened at around 32nd and Shea. You've got the cookbook coming out now. Where do you want to take this? Is this something that you imagine continuing to grow?

CARAWAY: Oh yeah, we just moved into our new building, so our first diner lasted about maybe seven years. We started a capital campaign to build a new location because we had outgrown our current one. We didn't raise all the money that we had intended to raise, but we built a new building and we're operating as if we raised all that money, so we're still trying to figure that out.

But the idea is to grow to a weekly service, not just the one meal every week, but a week's worth of food to everyone that we serve across the Valley and across the state. And we are running in that direction. When we opened our new space, we were maybe sending about 250 meals out every week. That was about five months ago, and we're already over 1,300 meals each week going out.

GILGER: So 1,300. How many people are benefiting from this now? 

CARAWAY: About 300.

GILGER: My goodness, that's a lot. So I mean, obviously this is fulfilling to you and that's kind of the point here. I wonder this, because I'm sure this must come up in your head like, what do you think Joy would think?

CARAWAY: She would be stoked. I mean, she was very selfless, like she really was the type of person that was more concerned about everybody else around her than herself, especially towards the end, she was very vibrant. She had a smile. She's like, “I'm fine, everybody” She was more concerned with the people that were making sure that she was OK than she was of herself.

I think she would be pretty stoked. I think she would be right there in the trenches with us, making sure that we were stoking people out with real food and companionship.