We received this update from our friends at Operation BBQ Relief Monday April 6. We find great hope in our barbecue community by seeing these heroes going above and beyond to support their communities.
In KC Friday (April 3 2020) marked 10 days of serving meals to the homeless, first responders, to KC area hospitals and the food insecure families. A small team of 5-6 volunteers each day put out 12,000 meals during that time.
This week in KC we set up a restaurant pilot to serve meals to the community. Operation Restaurant Relief is a program that during COVID 19 we are looking at to help serve needed meals in communities, help the restaurant out financially and they hire back employees to put out an average of 2500 meals a day for a two week period. We also provide the food and most supplies for the 2 weeks. Our culinary team also works with the restaurant to ensure they can put out the meals with the food provided.
We have learned a lot this week and even though it started slow the restaurant is up at 2500 meals a day or more right now. They have done Approximately 9800 meals so far.
We are able to do this for approximately $4.25 cents a meal which is a very reasonable price. The program is helping a restaurant that had to close and lay-off employees reopen and hire some employees back while putting out approx 2500 meals a day over a 14 day period. That is a triple win!!!
In Jonesboro Dewayne Daniel worked with our BBQ ofriends at BBQ Restaurant Q49 to put out 1300 meals after the tornado last Saturday!
We have a restaurant group working a modified restaurant program in Hilton Head SC that has 4 restaurants. They served 1125 meals over the weekend. There is a large population of resort and restaurant workers that have been laid off in the area. They will be serving meals for the next 12 days.
We have a lot of things in the works including the funding in Bakersfield CA for a restaurant to feed the homeless population and feed insecure as most soup kitchens and pantries have closed or doing limited meals. The grant from Dignity Health will help us provide 35,000 meals in Bakersfield over a two week period. We don’t have a launch date yet.
Our team continues to look for how we can help in communities across the country during this time. We are on many state calls and national calls looking for the needs that may exist during this crisis.
I will keep you up dated on what we are doing. Right now a lot of activity with several states but no specifics at this time.
For more information from our Friends at Operation BBQ Relief please visit their website.
If you have a story you would like to share about what you and your community are doing to support those around you in this time of need we would love to hear about it. Please send us an email at main@olehickorypits.com or by clicking the email link bellow.
Proudly Made In the Heart of the USA