Metro Detroit entrepreneur Kwaku Osei, like so many with busy lives, faced challenges when deciding what to eat.

"It’s become very easy and convenient to grab the wrong things when it comes time to fuel ourselves," he said.

The Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers' popular Top 10 Takeover dining series is back with a lineup that showcases chefs who gave back to their communities during the pandemic. Next up to go on sale: Farmacy Food with chef Phil Jones, the Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers 2021 Chef of the Year.

‘If I see someone happy, it makes me happy."

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For 50 years, Chef Phil Jones has cooked in high-end restaurants and fed those in need. The coronavirus pandemic changed his world in ways he couldn’t imagine.

Detroit chefs have stepped up and lent their time and talents to help feed hungry neighbors this Thanksgiving. 

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Chef Phil Jones of Farmacy Foods assembled a team of bakers and chefs to cook turkey, dressing, stuffing, potatoes, green beans and sweet potato soufflé for 1,000 local families.

“Right now, it feels like I have knives in my back,” Jones says wearily. “And this is a good day.”

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But at 55 years old, having spent the better part of those years on his feet behind hot stoves, Jones isn’t about to let his physical ailments prevent him from his calling: feeding the community.

Chef Phil Jones of Farmacy Foods was named 2021 Chef of the Year by the Detroit Free Press. Jones is a member of the Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen For Good Collective that provides food to local non-profit organizations, such as Neighborhood Service Organization, Detroit Rescue Mission and others. during the coronavirus pandemic.

As packages of food, cooked by some of Detroit's renowned chefs, towered on tables, cars rolled up to Fair Haven Baptist Church's parking lot for a free meal on Wednesday. 

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This food distribution was part of the Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Top 10 Cares Rescue Detroit Restaurants Feed the Community initiative, which recently raised nearly $95,000 to provide nearly 5,000 meals for people in need this week. About half were distributed Wednesday; the rest will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis Thursday. 

If anyone was built to feed people during a pandemic, it’s Phil Jones.

Not many chefs would know what to do with 100,000 pounds of cooked and diced chicken thighs, let alone how to get it to people in need safely and quickly, but Jones isn’t your average chef. 

“This was a game-changer for us,” said Kwaku Osei, the CEO of Farmacy, a food app startup focused on user’s dietary needs. Osei was one of five social entrepreneurs of color in the Detroit metro area matched with Masters students from the Ford School and the School of Information in a project focused on Public Interest Technology (PIT). 

Chef Phil Jones is a soft-spoken, modest man. But when he starts talking about overly processed food, prepared in a “thoughtless” and “callous” manner — the kind of meal he intercepted once at a summer youth camp — his usual genial demeanor is replaced by frustration mixed with fury.

What happened to all the food that was left uneaten after the swanky corporate conferences, wedding and bar mitzvahs?

Founders Brewing Co. is continuing its efforts to engage with the Black community following a contentious racial discrimination lawsuit — this time by honoring a Detroit chef for a special Black History Month collaboration.

That chef is Phil Jones, a longtime chef and activist who has made social justice issues a tenet of his work. He says when the opportunity to work with Founders presented itself, he couldn't turn it down if it meant he could leverage it to further his social justice work in Detroit.

Kwaku Osei is a co-founder of Farmacy Food, an up-and-coming meal venture that aims to launch healthy, fast, and casual restaurants in the name of "letting thy food be thy medicine." His "Tapas Talk," Farmacy Food: Food as Medicine Actualized, discusses Farmacy Food's efforts to develop a tech-enabled, quick-serve restaurant that creates tasty meals around people's dietary needs while incorporating medicinal ingredients to support health and well-being.