#ChefsForAmerica Week 5: 2 million meals served & an announcement from José
This week, WCK passed 2 million meals served in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing to expand our food relief operations in cities across America and in Spain. We are currently serving over 160,000 meals per day.
José Andrés also announced a commitment to purchase 1 million meals from small, local restaurants — bringing them back to work (safely). WCK will then deliver those meals with partners to families, seniors, frontline healthcare workers & more.
Restaurants are the nation’s second largest employer, accounting for more than 15 million jobs in the United States. With many across the country closed completely or operating with just a fraction of their staff, the industry has been devastated. It is WCK’s intention that by working directly with restaurants and providing the demand for the restaurant business, we can get meals to those who need them most while also uplifting an industry that needs all of our help to keep their doors open.
In New York City, WCK’s Relief Team with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies is taking over feeding operations for 16 NYC Health + Hospitals facilities, including 11 hospitals and 5 post-acute centers.
Also in NYC, we are launching Free Farmers Markets 6 days a week across the city. Working with Farmer Rich, WCK is purchasing from farms that typically serve restaurants, taking produce that otherwise would be thrown away and bringing it directly to families in need.
Our WCK teams are always on call. This week we heard about 700 employees of the Belmont Park race track and their families without food, so we brought fresh meals. We also got a call about frontline nurses supporting hospitals in NYC who hadn’t had a hot meal in 15 days. So we jumped into action, delivering 900 fresh cooked meals for these heroes! And we will be back every day.
This week we began fresh meal distribution in Detroit at King Solomon Church with National Action Network. We’ve served 10,000 meals to families and are expanding to 20,000 meals next week.
Meanwhile in Oakland, we are working with Steph & Ayesha Curry’s Eat.Learn.Play. to serve communities throughout the city. We’ve also begun to distribute meals in Seattle, Long Beach, Virginia Beach (alongside the brilliant Pharrell!) and beyond.
Meet Masky, WCK’s newest team member! He reminds us of things like safe distancing and of course, wearing a mask! See our safety protocols for cooking & distributing food here: https://wck.org/covid19-safety
Finally, this evening José will be on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper discussing WCK’s #ChefsForAmerica efforts, and how we must act with the urgency of now to ensure that we can make it through this moment of crisis.
As always, for our most recent work, follow us on Twitter and Instagram. You can donate to support our efforts here.
