Contributing Author: Jared Kaufman
Editor’s note: This article, like our list of community organizations you can support from home, will be continually updated throughout the COVID-19 outbreak and will remain in alphabetical order. Please email danielle@foodtank.com or elena@foodtank.com if you would like to add a restaurant to our running list.
COVID-19 is forcing restaurants around the country to stop dine-in service—and while some are providing takeout or delivery meals, many are closing. This is leaving chefs, cooks, wait staff, and others out of work. At the same time, restaurants and farmers are left with excess food they’re unable to sell, which is at risk of being wasted in a moment when food insecurity is on the rise.
But there is hope in the food system as well. Grassroots support initiatives are being formed all over the world, many of which are accepting donations of money, food, and even volunteer time. Some of the country’s most acclaimed restaurateurs, from Tom Colicchio to Andrew Zimmern to José Andrés, have formed the Independent Restaurant Coalition to protect restaurants hit hard by COVID-19. They are calling on Congress to improve federal relief loans, and collecting signatures in support online. And the James Beard Foundation, through its Food and Beverage Industry Relief Fund, has given away over US$500,000 to help independent restaurants survive. Relief efforts like these are keeping restaurants afloat during COVID-19, and in turn, restaurants are prioritizing their neighborhoods by transitioning into community kitchens.
Food Tank is highlighting restaurants that are donating free meals, offering groceries, and partnering with local nonprofits to help those affected by COVID-19. And they have been able to keep staff employed, avoid food waste, and find ways to reduce food insecurity during an uncertain economic time.
1. Anoush’ella, Boston
One location of the Boston Armenian-Lebanese restaurant Anoush’ella remains open for takeout and delivery during COVID-19, but their two other locations have closed. With the extra food from those kitchens, the restaurant is preparing and donating 60 free meals a day to people in the hospitality industry who are out of work during the COVID-19 outbreak.
2. Arcana, Boulder, Colorado
Arcana has transitioned into a community kitchen operating on a pay-what-you-can model. Every menu item has a sliding scale price beginning at US$0, and customers are welcome to choose the price they are able to pay on the honor system. Arcana is also waiving delivery fees and the expectation of tipping, but rather is accepting donations to a staff support fund, which will go toward furloughed employees. On the BLDRfly Podcast, Arcana co-owner Elliott Toan said he is interested in continuing this community-oriented model even after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.
3. Bayou Bakery, Arlington, Virginia
Bayou Bakery, Coffee Bar, & Eatery, a New Orleans-style café, has pivoted toward serving free meals to school-aged students, their families, and military households. Chef David Guas partnered with Real Food for Kids to serve nutritious, plant-based lunches every weekday, which can be picked up at Bayou Bakery in Arlington, no questions asked. In the first ten days, over 1,700 meals were distributed, and Guas plans to continue until schools re-open. Other restaurants have joined Guas’ initiative, and free meals can now also be picked up at restaurants in Annandale, Virginia, and Gaithersburg, Maryland.
4. Blue Hill, New York
Blue Hill and Stone Barns Center have partnered to launch resourcED, a program to support the independent local food movement during the pandemic crisis and beyond. A key component of the program are the resourcED boxes, The Garde Manger Box: essential supplements for your lunch or dinner — vegetable stews and purees, fresh pasta, condiments, crackers, butters and more and the Vegetable, Meat, Bread and Flower Boxes Add-ons such as wine, cocktails and more are available as well. In addition, you can donate a box of prepared food to community hospitals and their teams. Each box serves 10 hospital workers.
5. Café Momentum, Dallas, Texas
As a nonprofit restaurant and culinary training center, Café Momentum already operates in a community-first mindset. Café Momentum provides a 12-month paid internship program for young people released from juvenile detention, with life skills training during the program and employment placements available afterward. As restaurants are forced to restrict operations during COVID-19, Café Momentum has pivoted into a food hub model to continue providing support both to the community and to the interns. With the help of their new fundraising campaign, Momentum E.A.T.s, they are preparing and donating meal kits for young people experiencing food insecurity. Already, Café Momentum has begun providing students and families of one Dallas-area school district with 16,000 boxed meals a week.
6. Cafe Roze Bodega, Nashville, Tenn.
In addition to serving a daily family dinner menu, an all-day takeaway menu, and sizable to-go cocktails, Nashville’s Cafe Roze has launched Roze Bodega to help the community during COVID-19. Customers can place orders online for a variety of grocery items, from fresh produce and herbs to regional dairy and grains. Pickup is available curbside at Cafe Roze’s location in East Nashville, and Roze Bodega will also deliver your groceries and meals to your home.
7. Coquette, New Orleans
One of the most popular nights at Coquette, a Southern restaurant with an emphasis on local ingredients, is No Menu Tuesdays. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Coquette is introducing No Menu; Takeout Edition, which is a fully packaged multi-course meal with detailed heating instructions and photos. Meals can be picked up on Fridays or Saturdays, and each week has its own theme. The restaurant encourages you to have fun by dressing in a costume to match the theme—but not post spoilers on social media!
8. Eleven Madison Park, New York City
Eleven Madison Park, the 3-Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan, has closed for guests amid COVID-19. But the kitchen is still active — as a commissary space for Rethink Food, a food rescue organization that provides free meals for New Yorkers in need. Following a donation from American Express, restaurant staff remain employed to prepare thousands of free meals a day for people who are food-insecure, homebound and elderly, and on the front lines of delivering medical care.
9. The Essex Market, Centerbrook, Conn.
Owners and staff of three Centerbrook, Connecticut, restaurants—The Essex Restaurant, The Coco Club, and Los Charros Cantina—have launched The Essex Market amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The market sells basic groceries, including milk, eggs, butter, flour, and fresh bread. They’re also selling prepared foods from the restaurants’ kitchens, ranging from Mexican soups to pasta and meat sauce to Mediterranean grain bowls. In addition to pickup options from Tuesday to Saturday, The Essex Market offers delivery to any local address.
10. FieldTrip, New York City
FieldTrip, a rice bowl shop in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, is feeding health care workers and kids during COVID-19. Donors can purchase bowls to donate for less than the typical menu price, and FieldTrip is covering tax and delivery costs on donated meals. For the month of April, FieldTrip is also partnering with urban farming nonprofit Harlem Grown to offer warm meals to families and children in shelters, who have reduced access to food because schools are closed.
11. Flights, Los Gatos, CA
Flights, a small-plates restaurant with several locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, has turned their Los Gatos, California, location into a no-touch drive-through grocery store. In addition to essentials like milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables, sugar, and ground coffee, Flights is also offering prepared individual and family-size meals and household items like toilet paper and paper towels. The store is set up in the restaurant’s parking lot, and is open from noon to 7 p.m. daily.
12. Fowl and Fodder, Toledo, Ohio
Instead of its typical Southern brunch fare, Fowl and Fodder has converted into the 4-1-DINE Market, an online grocery store. People can shop daily for staple ingredients, meat and produce, household essentials, and meal kits, with pickup and delivery available Wednesdays and Saturdays. “Friends don’t let friends go hungry in the 419,” they say. In keeping with this ethos, Fowl and Fodder has partnered with Mosaic Ministries to create the 4-1-DINE Community Care Fund, which helps those experiencing food insecurity due to COVID-19.
13. Frontline Food Trucks, New York City
An initiative of the New York Food Truck Association, Frontline Food Trucks is dispatching its member food trucks to serve free coffee, snacks, and meals to medical professionals. As hospital cafeterias and local restaurants close, it can be difficult for healthcare workers at hospitals such as NYU Langone, Mount Sinai, and others to eat between shifts. Currently, they are working up to their goal of delivering three meals a day, seven days a week, at 5–10 hospitals throughout the city.
14. Gandy Dancer, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Gandy Dancer, a steak and seafood restaurant in Ann Arbor, has pivoted to selling groceries to the community amid COVID-19. In addition to staples and toilet paper, the restaurant is selling meat, fish, seafood, and more from its pantry. “A lot of people are saying they’re happy to support us, but a lot of people are saying, ‘Thank you for helping us,’” manager Charlene Gulliford told the Associated Press.
15. Great Performances, New York City
Bronx-based catering company Great Performances has pivoted toward food donation during the COVID-19 outbreak. In coordination with the New York City Department for the Aging and the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), Great Performances is providing 40,000 meals to seniors in Manhattan and an additional 10,000 weekly meals for OEM to distribute. In their own neighborhood, Great Performances is also contributing to food delivery in three public housing buildings and donating 100 boxed meals every day to partner organizations in the South Bronx.
16. The Herbfarm, Woodinville, Washington
Located right outside Seattle, The Herbfarm is a much-lauded pioneer of local foodways and regional cooking. During COVID-19, The Herbfarm’s dining room is closed, but restaurant staff and volunteers have continued cooking since March 15 to donate meals to hospital workers in the Puget Sound area. By continuing to prepare these individually boxed, multi-course meals, The Herbfarm is continuing to support its staff and local producers while honoring medical caregivers on the front lines of the epidemic.
17. HipCityVeg, Philadelphia
In early April, Philadelphia 76ers point guard Shake Milton donated 500 meals from plant-based restaurant HipCityVeg to medical staff at local hospitals. The restaurant launched the “Give Shake An Assist” campaign so community members could contribute online. The Give Shake an Assist campaign has now tripled Milton’s original donation, letting HipCityVeg deliver 1,500 lunches to Philadelphia hospitals. Plant-based meat company Beyond Meat has donated hundreds of Beyond Burgers to support the initiative, and Daiya, Gardein, and Follow Your Heart have also contributed to the effort.
18. Jaleo, Bethesda, MD, Crystal City, VA, and Washington D.C. locations; America Eats Tavern, Washington D.C.; Mercado Little Spain’s Spanish Diner, New York City
Many of chef José Andrés’s restaurants, including Mercado Little Spain in New York City and three Jaleo locations in Washington, D.C., have closed to the public and been repurposed as community kitchens. There, Andrés and his teams are preparing “plates of the day” for takeout at affordable prices, or free for those who are unable to pay. These kitchens are ThinkFoodGroup activations that are part of Andrés’s nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, which provides meals in the wake of natural disasters.
19. Kirwan’s on the Wharf and Samuel Beckett’s, Washington, D.C. area
Mark Kirwan, the owner of DC-area Irish pubs Kirwan’s on the Wharf and Samuel Beckett’s, is responding to the COVID-19 outbreak both as a restaurant owner and in his other job—as a two-decade veteran of DC’s Metropolitan Police Department. When he is not at his restaurants, he’s on patrol, making sure people are respecting social distancing guidelines to slow the spread of COVID-19. And when he’s not out in the community as a police officer, he’s taking on the role of delivery driver: Kirwan’s on the Wharf and Samuel Beckett’s are both donating free meals to local hospitals and police stations, and it’s often Kirwan himself dropping off the food to those on the front lines.
20. La Toque, Napa, California
Michelin-starred Napa Valley restaurant La Toque closed its dining room in March, but its kitchens are still active. During the COVID-19 outbreak, chef Ken Frank and his team are donating nearly 100 hot lunches every weekday to the South Napa Homeless Shelter, and plan to continue as long as necessary. “We’re going to be creative and use mostly food we get donated, both from the local food bank and the Saturday Farmers Market,” Frank told the Napa Valley Register. “I want to feed them how I feed my own family.”
21. Little Sesame, Washington, D.C.
As part of its Meals for the City initiative, D.C. Mediterranean restaurant Little Sesame has turned its three locations into community kitchens. Since mid-March, they have partnered with nonprofit Dreaming Out Loud to provide over 10,000 meals to underserved D.C. communities. Little Sesame is donating one meal per US$10 gift card purchased, which allows the restaurant to keep its staff employed while serving 500 meals a day at mobile pick-up stations at schools and senior homes.
22. Marcus B&P Newark, Newark, New Jersey
Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s restaurant Marcus B&P, in Newark, New Jersey, is supporting restaurants around the city while also donating meals to workers on the front lines. Samuelsson is partnering with chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen, audiobook company Audible, and actor Michael B. Jordan to form Newark Working Kitchens (NWK). NWK will employ restaurant staff at independent eateries in Newark to prepare meals for donation. Marcus B&P Newark has donated 2,500 meals so far, and Audible’s donation of US$1 million will help NWK deliver over 100,000 meals to Newark residents during the COVID-19 outbreak.
23. Minnesota Central Kitchen, Minneapolis
Minnesota Central Kitchen is a collaboration between anti-hunger organizations Second Harvest Heartland and Loaves and Fishes, and food service partners including Chowgirls Catering, The Bachelor Farmer, and Restaurant Alma. In addition to donating meals to food-insecure Minnesotans, Minnesota Central Kitchen aims to keep restaurant staff employed and cut down on waste by using excess food from partners across the Twin Cities. With support and additional kitchen space from The Cargill Foundation, Minnesota Central Kitchen will be able to donate over 10,000 meals every day at Loaves and Fishes distribution sites around the state.
24. Pecan Grill and Brewery, Las Cruces, New Mexico
After closing their dining room, Pecan Grill and Brewery decided to sell groceries directly to the public to prevent their backstock from being wasted. The brewpub is selling staples like flour, milk, beans, and rice, as well as fresh produce such as tomatoes and zucchini. Pecan Grill is also offering discounts to medical workers and students.
25. Porridge and Puffs, Los Angeles
In L.A.’s Historic Filipinotown district, Porridge and Puffs is feeding their community and donating meals through a pop-up shop. They offer prepared foods like banh mi sandwiches and various porridges; handy ingredients like white miso and sourdough starter; and “unexpected delights” like fresh herbs and natural lip balm handmade by an employee. The pop-up’s signature item is The Gold Set Meal, an affordable, boxed multi-course meal named after late food critic Jonathan Gold. The menu rotates regularly, and for each meal purchased, US$5 goes toward meals for first responders and other frontline workers in L.A. Porridge and Puffs is donating 100 set meals a week. “We don’t have a choice but to be fearless,” says chef and owner Minh Phan. “I’m a war kid, I changed careers after 9/11, I lived through 2007. We’ll survive and thrive.”
26. Red Rooster, New York City and Miami
Both of chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster restaurants—the original in Harlem and its new sister spot in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami—have transformed into community kitchens during the COVID-19 outbreak. In association with chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen, Red Rooster Harlem is distributing free meals to those in need every weekday at noon, and Red Rooster Overtown is doing the same on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Thanks to coordinating and fundraising efforts by Food Rescue US-Miami, Red Rooster Overtown has donated more than 2,200 meals over the past few weeks.
27. Solomon’s Delicatessen, Sacramento, California
After initially being forced to close and lay off employees due to COVID-19, Sacramento deli Solomon’s Delicatessen has transformed into a community kitchen and rehired many kitchen employees. In partnership with the nonprofit Sacramento Covered and anonymous donors, Solomon’s Delicatessen is preparing upwards of 300 meals a day for elderly, medically vulnerable, food-insecure, and unsheltered people in the community.
28. Sqirl, Los Angeles, California
After chef Nancy Silverton of Chi Spacca, in Los Angeles, was diagnosed with COVID-19, the food relief program she began was continued by local brunch spot Sqirl. The program is called Framily Meal, and it offers food and essential items to out-of-work hospitality employees. Framily Meal is supported by bourbon producer Maker’s Mark, actress Busy Philipps, and food companies like Imperfect Produce, Sfoglini Pasta Shop, and Cowgirl Creamery. Sqirl has donated thousands of meals for two and household products like diapers and cleaning wipes.
29. Staplehouse, Atlanta, Georgia
Staplehouse is already known for doing things a little differently—the tasting menu spot is a subsidiary of the nonprofit Giving Kitchen, to which they donate their revenue, and Staplehouse chefs and bartenders incorporate items from the backyard garden into dishes and drinks. Now, Staplehouse has launched The Giving Soup Kitchen at their location near downtown, where staff remain employed to prepare and provide free meals for those in the service industry who have been laid off. “What do people need right now? Food. What do restaurants have that they can’t use now? Food,” chef-owner Ryan Smith told Eater Atlanta.
30. Tacombi, New York City
Tacombi, a traditional Mexican taco shop with locations around New York City, has launched the Tacombi Community Kitchen in response to COVID-19. In addition to reopening the Nolita location for takeout and delivery, Tacombi is designating one dish per day for which all the proceeds will go toward their community kitchen efforts. So far, Tacombi has been able to donate 1,600 meals per week to organizations including Mercy Center in the Bronx, Mixteca Organization in Brooklyn, and Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens.
31. The Tandem, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Although The Tandem, a Southern-inspired restaurant in Milwaukee, initially planned on offering takeout and delivery during the COVID-19 outbreak, they soon realized that, to serve their community, they had to switch gears. Since mid-March, The Tandem has been offering free community meals beginning at 11 a.m. every weekday. After running out of meals extraordinarily quickly the first few days, the restaurant has partnered with other community businesses to donate over 350 meals a day. The menu, shared on social media, changes daily and always offers at least 3 options, one of which is vegetarian or vegan.
32. Union Loafers, St. Louis, Missouri
Union Loafers, which was named one of the country’s best bread bakeries by the Food Network, has begun selling groceries for those isolating at home. They are selling several varieties of bread, a sourdough starter, and a wide selection of honeys, jams, and butters. Breads are available for purchase beginning at 9 a.m. until they are sold out, with pickup available each afternoon. Wine and beer are available by the bottle.
