On May 10 and 11, chefs, activists, and volunteers will gather at City Market in downtown Raleigh for the inaugural Thrive NC, a two-day event that will feature a summit, day of service, and a two-night culinary festival of tastings, chef demonstrations, and live music. The event is presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, which created it in the belief that communities thrive when they are healthy and active.

“Blue Cross N.C.’s mission is to improve the health and well-being of our customers and communities. Simply stated, we want to see our state thrive,” says Patrick Conway, president and CEO of Blue Cross N.C. “Our vision for Thrive NC is to mobilize top restaurants, award-winning chefs, and community-minded thought leaders to work together toward solutions for the food challenges our state faces.”

To help raise awareness and address some of the issues facing our communities, Thrive NC will host a summit on May 10 to bring together 150 key food-system stakeholders and expert panelists from across North Carolina to have critical conversations about childhood nutrition and food as an economic development tool. Bryant Terry, a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award-winning chef, educator, author, and food-system activist, will deliver the keynote address, and Emmy-award-winning chef Vivian Howard will provide lunch and share her story.

On Friday, May 11, more than one hundred BCBS employees and event partners will gather for a day of service to support Inter-Faith Food Shuttle; volunteers will build four hundred grocery boxes for food-insecure seniors in Wake County and six hundred backpacks for the BackPack Buddies program, which provides kids with nutritious groceries for the weekend when school meals are not available.

Thrive NC will culminate with a two-night culinary festival featuring unlimited sampling from local restaurants and breweries, live music, and chef demos. Sample brews and bites from more than fifty local vendors, including lump-crab doughnuts from Poole’s Diner, truffle mac and cheese from Oro Restaurant & Lounge, and char siu bao from Brewery Bhavana, to name a few. Night II is sold out, but tickets ($30) are still available for Night I on May 10; proceeds will be donated back to area nonprofit organizations.