The Joy Kitchen

Kids find fun and hope through cooking at Joy Kitchen.

In Nashville’s Napier neighborhood, just next to booming Wedgewood-Houston, young people are finding the recipe for success in an industrial kitchen. 

Joy Kitchen’s roots stretch back more than 10 years to Chef Sterling Wright, who grew up in the neighborhood. There, he defied the odds, learned to cook and wound up a contestant on Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen. After turning down a job offer from Gordon—you gotta be good for that—Chef Wright returned to his old neighborhood to make a difference. “We gotta show our children a better life,” he says, “and who’s better to show them than somebody who’s lived that life?” 

Over time, the chef ’s program for youth, Cooking the Wright Way, evolved into the Joy Kitchen initiative. It’s not just a training program to prepare young people for elevated culinary careers, but a whole-human support system reaching far beyond the kitchen to provide mentorship, counseling and financial literacy to youth who are often overlooked and undervalued. 

Bryan Bennett, the nonprofit’s co-founder and CEO, agrees. After meeting Chef Wright in 2024, he felt called to get involved and move it beyond pop-ups and catering in borrowed spaces to a brick-and-mortar of their own. “There is a wall that sits between communities like Napier and the rest of the city,” Bryan observes. “My job is to help this city see how extraordinary these young people are.” To get that job done, he partnered with Chef Wright and gathered a volunteer village—lawyers, a board, a Michelin-trained chef—all of whom donated their time and expertise. 

Still, the challenge was daunting: find and secure a lease on a second-generation space that already has a commercial kitchen and is walkable from Napier. Tall order, yet, whoop, there it is! By the end of 2026, Joy Kitchen will open in Wedgewood-Houston, just a mile from Napier, allowing the program’s graduates to walk to their first real culinary job. 

Fun and warmth are priorities for Chef Sterling Wright. (right)

Leading the kitchen will be Chef de Cuisine 24 year-old Cameron Carver, who came up through Chef Wright’s program and is a success story from the neighborhood himself. 

“So many people don’t know what Napier is,” Bryan says, “and make assumptions based on what’s in the headlines. Gangs and violence and drugs do exist, but that’s not the whole story. The young people who live in Napier have the exact same God-given potential as the kids who go to Ensworth or MBA.” 

Joy Kitchen (opening late 2026) 
Wedgewood-Houston 
joykitchen.org 
@joykitchen