Food insecurity and hunger:
" Chefs and restaurant owners now plot moves to help sustain their employees. Edward Lee, chef and proprietor of 610 Magnolia in Louisville, Kentucky, has made one of the boldest moves. He says that this crisis will decimate many of the bussers and dishwashers and bartenders he knows and respects. “Their financial lives are really fragile,” he said Monday afternoon. “This is not the time to judge their lives and their choices. These people are the heart and muscle of our industry. By this weekend, some will be desperate.”
Saturday night, after service, Lee shuttered his restaurant. And he began to convert the kitchen where he rose to fame serving bacon-pâté BLTs into a relief kitchen. Tuesday, from a space where he once staged wine dinners, he will hand out free boxed dinners to Louisville workers who have been laid off from restaurant industry jobs. In the same space, he will run a small commissary, dispensing free toilet paper and diapers and cereal and canned goods. Lee aims to self-fund the effort through Sunday. After that he plans to attract donor support. “We hope to inspire other people to open their restaurants up this way,” Lee said. “And for donors to get inspired to help. If a few restaurants in each market open their kitchens up like this, maybe we can mitigate the impact on the people of our industry.” "
https://www.southernfoodways.org/restaurant-futures-in-the-time-of-covid-19/
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“Restaurants and food companies, big and small, are stepping up to feed hospital workers, who may not be able to procure or have time to prepare their own food. The effort is driven by twin instincts: to help those putting their lives at risk and to keep their workers employed and businesses — their own and the ones that supply them — afloat. Initiatives have sprung up from Atlanta to Seattle, and nearly everywhere in between. It’s an ad hoc version of what José Andrés, the Washington, D.C., chef and founder of the disaster-relief nonprofit World Central Kitchen, has called on the federal government to set up: a corps of “food first responders” to serve America’s most vulnerable populations.”
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I’ve family members and friends who work in organic agriculture; they’re all scrambling to adapt to get their produce to where it will be of use.
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Seems similar to the toilet-paper situation, where the consumer supply chain can’t meet demand while the business supply chain has lost most of its customers.
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Yep, that’s the parallel: not that there is a shortage, but the supply chains aren’t flexible enough to make these swift pivots to get the product to where it is needed.
My family/friends are also finding it difficult to find/train staff or labor - especially with the critical social distancing.
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More on smaller farmers, ranchers, cheese-makers … .
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And on food banks, too.
Kouraku was the diner we would go to after a night of drinking or after working overtime
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These guys pivoted to retail. I’m picking up a ham and leg of lamb this afternoon.
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They’ve been doing this kind of thing for years - mafia, corrupt dictators, etc. It’s how they get the “little people” on their side and to turn a blind eye to the fact that they’re actually exploiting and ruining their communities. But, hey, I gave you a turkey.
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Note to folks trying to think of ways to give - food banks don’t need your old canned goods, they need money.
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Amen.
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About the UK but many of the same issues are here, too.
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I ache for the families, and for their herds. I hate waste, and I hate suffering.
This is heartbreaking and will only get worse; I have no idea what the food landscape will look like whenever we emerge (whatever that will entail) from the current reality.
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