Join Emerging Professionals Committee for a hard hat tour of the new Kids Meals building by Kirksey Architecture. The project is a five-acre master plan and a 50,000-sf building that creates improved storage, volunteer, and administration spaces to better serve Kids’ Meals’ mission to end childhood hunger.
Date: March 20, 2025
Time: 4PM
Space is limited and RSVP is required
AIA Credit: 1.5 LU
More about the project.
Kids’ Meals, Inc. is on a mission to end childhood hunger in Houston, Texas. The organization provides free, healthy meals to children across the city. In 2021, Kids’ Meals set out to expand their campus and update their facilities to better serve pre-school-aged children in the Houston community.
Kids’ Meals established “The Building Hope Campaign” to raise funds for the project and hired Kirksey to complete the five-acre campus master plan and design their new building. The new, 50,000-sf updated warehouse includes programming for storage, food preparation, volunteer zones, and administration areas. The new volunteer space creates space for 200 volunteers to prepare lunches across five bays. Easy access to multiple coolers and freezers provides ease of travel for the storage carts from the warehouse to the preparation areas. A driver touchdown area is adjacent to the volunteer space and allows for efficient van loading. A utensil washroom, storage room, and sinks at each bay help with sanitary needs for food preparation. Clerestory windows provide natural light into the warehouse, with four loading docks, three ramped docks, and one ground access dock for vans. All docks have levelers and a charging area for electric equipment needed for pallet transportation.
The administration area consists of two floors with a breakroom on each floor. Vertical circulation of an open stair within the breakroom provides visual connections between the two. Both floors hold a mix of offices and open workstations, and a conference room on each floor has visual connections with windows to the warehouse. The new parking portion provides 115 parking spaces for visitors and 75 parking spaces for employees and van parking.
