Atlanta's food scene is heading courtside next month, with more than 30 chefs, restaurants and beverage partners set to take over State Farm Arena for one night to benefit workers in the industry who are struggling. The event, called Forkside Seats, pairs a seated dinner on the arena floor with a cause: raising support for Giving Kitchen, the nonprofit that provides emergency financial assistance to food service workers facing illness, injury or hardship.
Forkside Seats is scheduled for Nov. 1, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. at State Farm Arena, according to State Farm Arena's event listing, which also confirms the night will feature more than 30 chefs, restaurants and beverage partners. The evening is designed to peel back the layers of Atlanta's favorite food spots and honor the kitchen crews behind them, as previewed by Allison Padilla-Goodman and chef Robert Butts on Atlanta News First's ATL Live, a program that features live and taped segments with guests, some of which may be sponsored.
Guests can expect pre-dinner tastings and cocktails before sitting down to a seated dinner on the arena floor, followed by dessert, a live auction and music, according to details posted by Giving Kitchen. Chef Robert Butts of Station 11 and Argile is among those contributing to the surprise main course, per the same event page. All guests must be 21 or older to attend, and both individual tickets and group packages for reserved seating are available.
What Giving Kitchen Does With the Money
Giving Kitchen exists to catch food service workers when life goes sideways, offering emergency financial assistance alongside a network of community-resource referrals, the nonprofit's own materials explain. Allison Padilla-Goodman, the organization's CEO, has described the scale of need in stark terms: there are 15.8 million food service workers in the country, and it's estimated that one to two percent are in crisis at any given time, she told Atlanta News First earlier this year. The outlet also reported that Giving Kitchen had just received its 60,000th Ask for Help form around the time of that March interview.
Separately, Giving Kitchen reported in a September 2025 release distributed via PR Newswire that a food service worker now reaches out for help every 28 minutes. That same release found that nearly 84% of surveyed workers said the aid helped them avoid potential homelessness, while nearly 75% said it helped them avoid eviction.
Numbers That Depend on When You Ask
Exactly how much Giving Kitchen has distributed, and to how many people, varies depending on which report you read and when it was published. Giving Kitchen's own announcement marking its expansion said more than 10,000 food service workers had received a direct service totaling $6.5 million in financial assistance. The September 2025 PR Newswire release put the total at more than $16.3 million awarded to more than 31,000 workers nationwide. A trade-publication report from cater-event.com in September 2026 cited an even higher figure, saying the organization had helped more than 41,000 food service workers and awarded more than $17 million since 2013. The dossier does not clarify whether these figures use the same definitions or reporting windows, so the totals should be read as snapshots in time rather than a single running count.
The organization's reach has grown steadily since its founding. Giving Kitchen expanded its service area to all of Georgia in 2019, then all of Tennessee in 2021, before going nationwide in 2022. That same year marked the start of a partnership with the QPR Institute to offer free suicide-prevention training to food service workers across the country, a program that has trained more than 600 workers since it launched.
A Second Year on the Arena Floor
This isn't Forkside Seats' first lap around the hardwood. The event returns to State Farm Arena for its second year, according to the cater-event.com report, after debuting with more than a dozen participating Atlanta kitchens in its inaugural run, per Giving Kitchen's event archive.
The live auction planned for the night will benefit Giving Kitchen's broader work supporting food service workers facing crisis, Giving Kitchen says. For a city whose restaurant culture runs on long shifts and tight margins, the pitch is straightforward: pay for a seat on the arena floor, and the proceeds go toward keeping someone else's kitchen crew afloat when things fall apart.
