- We've done through today 9,035 meals,
so on Thursday we'll have over
1,000, or sorry, over 10,000!
- It's just wonderful to see
all these immigrants coming together
and learning from each other
culturally in that kitchen
which has been a terrific thing
because our Latin people have not worked
necessarily directly with
Middle Eastern people,
and vice versa, so it's created
a very interesting interaction at work.
- The first thought is what
are we gonna do with it?
How we can support our
members during this pandemic
and how we can support the community?
- We set out this GoFundMe,
we had a request
to do 250 meals a day for five days.
And then the first day happened,
and we said, "Oh wow, we did
it!" And the second day,
and every day, we started
doing a little bit more.
By the third week we were doubling it
and we were doing over 500 meals a day.
We have never made 250 individual meals.
We cater for hundreds of people
but that's totally different.
Boxing up and packing 250 meals
was something that we'd never done.
- The first thing that came to mind
at the beginning of this pandemic
and when we closed the restaurant
were, OK, we have a staff,
some of them are Americans,
they can file for unemployment.
Some have Exceptional
Talent Visas so they cannot.
And then we have others that
are here as political refugees,
so for me, the most important thing
with my husband was to see who
is more in danger of having
no food on their table?
- People have been super, super grateful,
and all the food that we're making,
I think the fun thing is we're
giving out meals for free,
so people aren't ordering.
Everybody is free to
make whatever they want,
and what they love, and
what they want to show off,
and we have a lot of really
talented people in the kitchen.
We're putting Middle
Eastern and Syrian flavors
and rice together with
chipotle and adobo chicken,
and coming together to make dishes.
- I have to add that the
food that they're making,
which I've been a recipient a couple times
just to check it out, is very balanced.
It has protein, it has a carb,
and it has vegetables every single time.
And it's also the amount, it's generous,
so no one will go hungry with this program.
- One of the people who
helps us get food donations
like produce, he asked,
"Hey, just make sure
"you bring two boxes for me every day."
'Cause he loves eating it.
One of the people
that we're giving food to now,
he runs an after-school program,
which obviously is not running now,
and he's trying to make sure
he's taking care of the families.
And he saw me with boxes of food
and stopped me on the
street and was like,
"That smells really good, what is that?"
And now we give him 150 meals a day
for people in his after-school program
and families like that.
- So we just have a couple
people in the community
that are plugged in
with the food donations.
For example, if they say,
"OK, we have spinach
today and broccoli,"
we'll just take it and make
whatever we have from there.
And that why the team is amazing,
they're being very creative
with whatever we have.
They make amazing meals out of it.
Which I think they've been
enjoying the challenge
of, "What are we gonna make today?"
- Every penny that we raise
is directly to fund these free meals.
The goal is to not lose money,
which in the food industry often people
are losing money, so
if we don't lose money
and we keep people employed,
I think that's a win.
- It's usually towards the end of the week
that I'm like I need to put
something out on social media
because we need more money for next week.
- So far this continues,
I think we'll be able to avoid the hunger,
which is as I said for me,
the most important thing.
