NEWS
These L.A. restaurants let you send food straight to frontline workers
04/20/2020
Los Angeles, CA
Who knew that ordering takeout and delivery could make you a hero?
First responders, nurses, doctors and others on the frontlines can use a show of support right now, and it’s never been easier or more delicious to do so: Your at-home dinner could mean feeding a hospital worker with a healthy, hot meal from some of the city’s best restaurants, while other spots make donating food as simple as the push of a button.
“Now, more than ever, they need our support and encouragement,” Modern Times Brewery says, “and this is our way of showing our deep appreciation for their difficult work and incredible compassion.”
Whether you’re looking to send salads, sandwiches, doughnuts, pizza or pasta, here’s how to send food directly to healthcare workers, plus how to help others in need around Los Angeles.
Food donations for healthcare workers:
Bavel and Bestia: Ordering meals from two of the city’s best restaurants? Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis offer a $3 add-on to brighten up healthcare workers’ days with some of the top sweets in town. When you’re ordering from Bestia or Bavel through Tock, you’ll see a “First Responder Treats” option: This sends fresh desserts such as cookies or cake to first responders, and they’re delivered each week to alternating medical facilities around L.A.
Donut Friend: L.A.’s favorite vegan doughnut shop is working with the Support + Feed initiative to donate plant-based goods to hospital workers, first responders and senior centers. Simply pull up Donut Friend’s page on most major delivery apps and click the $5 “Support + Feed” button, and doughnuts will go straight to frontline workers and seniors. A number of L.A. restaurants are also working with the initiative, including by Chloe, Hinterhof German Kitchen and Beer Garden, Crossroads Kitchen and Cena Vegan, though their donation items vary. (And if you’re feeling especially generous, by Chloe easily lets you donate up to $100 toward the cause.)
Élephante and Little Ruby: The breezy Aussie sibling spots in Santa Monica are now sending meals to hospitals all over L.A. with their “Empty Your Purse to Feed a Nurse” initiative in tandem with national effort Frontline Foods. Their New York-based restaurant group, Wish You Were Here, is running the same program out of its East Coast concepts, while in L.A., donations made through this GoFundMe result in meals that get dropped off to healthcare workers all over the city, including those at Providence St. John’s in Santa Monica, UCLA Medical Santa Monica, Cedars-Sinai in Beverly Grove, Southern California Hospital at Culver City and LAC+USC Medical in Boyle Heights. If you are a healthcare worker who’d like to request meals for your staff, email info@elephantela.com.
Gasolina Cafe: Talk about local love: If you want to support healthcare workers not just in L.A. but specifically the SFV, one of L.A.’s best Spanish restaurants is making it happen. Gasolina Cafe in Woodland Hills now offers a “buy a meal for a healthcare worker” option on its online menu, which sends a complete meal to doctors, nurses, techs and administrators in ICUs and emergency rooms in the San Fernando Valley. Just click the button and donate the $12; there’s also an option to add your name, neighborhood and a message for the hospital staff, to send the message that all of L.A. is behind them.
Larder Baking Co.: Suzanne Goin and the Lucques Group teamed up with Dine11, sending meals to healthcare workers in ERs and ICUs across the region. The chef’s bakery branch is selling breads and pastries via its Tock page with an option to add $10 to your purchase, which will deliver a meal made by sister branch Lucques Catering.
Modern Times: The funky brewery and coffee roastery with a beloved outpost in DTLA is giving healthcare workers a little something to keep going: caffeine and pastries. You can add cans of Modern Times’s own cold brew coffee and boxes of pastries via this website, at $5 each, and they’ll get delivered to nurses volunteering at command centers near Modern Times locations in L.A., San Diego, Oakland, Santa Barbara and Portland.
Olivetta and the Draycott: Marissa Hermer’s sibling restaurants are providing meals with a “YOU GIVE. WE COOK. THEY EAT.” initiative, ferrying food to Saint Johns Health Foundation, Cedars-Sinai, Santa Monica Firefighters, Children’s Hospital LA and beyond. Every donation through this fundraiser sends meals made by the West Hollywood and Palisades restaurants, which have also, separately, been whipping up donated dinners to a nominated local resident once a week. Talk about #GivingGoals.
Pizzana: We know that nothing cheers us up like pizza, and now you can give that gift to L.A.’s healthcare professionals thanks to one of the best pizzerias in town. Chef Daniele Uditi is sending Neapolitan-style pies to doctors, nurses and emergency medical workers thanks to donations via this fundraiser, allocating $3,000 each week to feed frontline workers at UCLA Medical Center, Children’s Hospital LA, Cedars-Sinai, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the Providence Tarzana Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Playa Provisions: Brooke Williamson and Nick Roberts’s South Bay staple teamed up with local org Help Feed the Frontline, which works with World Central Kitchen to provide meals for healthcare workers across Los Angeles. Playa Provision’s takeout and delivery menu now sports a button to donate $25 to the cause, and every $25 donated pays for the lunch and dinner of two healthcare workers.
Food donations for others in need:
APL: Adam Perry Lang’s modern Hollywood steakhouse is giving back with every meal you enjoy at home. For each meal ordered from APL, chef Adam Perry Lang and his friend and business partner, Jimmy Kimmel, will donate a meal to Venice’s St. Joseph’s Center, an organization that provides the homeless and less fortunate with resources to get back on their feet.
Few for All: Restaurant workers aren’t just essential—right now, some of them are superheroes. A handful of kitchen staff from local restaurants have teamed up to start Few for All, a “buy one, donate one” program that feeds Angelenos in need thanks to your own hunger. Every item purchased gets one pound of dried pasta donated to the LA Food Bank, which means those cookie dough logs, pasta sauces and fresh noodles you’re eating are for a great cause. Check Few for All’s menu in their Instagram highlights, then DM directly to place your order.
Secret Lasagna & Market: Due to shutdowns, restaurants and their employees are some of the hardest economically hit. That’s why for every meal that you purchase from this pop-up neighborhood market, a family-sized meal of lasagna gets donated to restaurant employees who are currently out of work. The program is in partnership with No Us Without You, an organization that’s keeping undocumented workers fed; 100 percent of the sales from select bottles of wine in the market also aid the nonprofit.
Governor: 16,000 Hotel Rooms to House Homeless in California
04/19/2020
California
Homeless encampment seen on Monday, April 13, 2020, in San Francisco. Local governments have begun moving large numbers of homeless into hotels as part of Operation Roomkey. Among the requirements are that people get tested when they check in and that med
The program has acquired nearly 11,000 rooms, and Motel 6 has promised to set aside 5,000 rooms in 19 counties, Newsom said.
Among the more than 100 homeless people in an undisclosed hotel on the west side of Los Angeles are two residents who are in hospice care, said Va Lecia Adams Kellum, chief executive of St. Joseph Center in Los Angeles.
“Because of Project Roomkey these men are inside a comfortable room where they can get the comprehensive and palliative care they need and die with dignity,” Adams Kellum said in an email.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit continues to offer to-go meals and groceries for the needy.
While praising municipalities that have stepped in to find temporary housing for the homeless, Newsom said Saturday there were “equivalent number of cities” that are blocking efforts to help the homeless. He wouldn’t name them.
“Please consider the morality of those decisions, consider the moment we’re in and the ethical question you’re being called and asked upon, consider your station in life and in history. All of us will be judged,” Newsom said.
Los Angeles County prosecutors requested an emergency hearing with a federal judge Friday, alleging the cities of Lawndale and Bell Gardens threatened to terminate city permits for hotels and motels participating in the program.
Laguna Hills in Orange County is also pushing back against plans to move homeless people into a hotel, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
In Los Angeles, where more than 30 homeless people have tested positive for coronavirus, medical teams will begin screening people for the virus on the streets, along with fast-result field tests, Mayor Eric Garcetti said. Those who are infected will be offered transportation to shelters and have hotel rooms set aside for them.
So far, San Francisco is the only city in California to report a large-scale outbreak at a homeless shelter, after more than 100 people tested positive, including 10 staff. None of the people was seriously ill when tested, but three have since been hospitalized, public health spokeswoman Rachael Kagan said.
The state also reported for the first time Friday that there are 3,500 confirmed cases, or about 12% statewide, in nursing homes or adult care facilities, where infections have spread quickly.
There have been signs the outbreak is slowing in the month or more since most of the state’s 40 million residents were ordered to stay at home. Social distancing rules are being praised for that development, but they have hit the economy hard, shutting down schools, tourist spots and most restaurants and retail businesses.
But some have chafed under the restrictions, including several dozen people who rallied in San Diego on Saturday against California’s stay-at-home order.
Newsom said he wasn’t opposed to the demonstrations but urged protesters to practice physical distancing while exercising their free speech.
“This virus knows no political ideology. It doesn’t know if you’re a Republican or a Democrat,” he said.
To start lifting restrictions and allow businesses to reopen, Newsom has said the state needs to test 25,000 people a day and better track those who are infected, up to about 20,000 a day now. Several areas have begun offering tests to people without symptoms. Until now, there’s been a shortage of test swabs and the chemical agents needed to process the tests.
“While California has excelled in so many categories, we have not in testing,” Newsom said Saturday in an online conversation with former President Bill Clinton.
“Right now, we’re not even close as a nation, let alone as a state, to where we should be on testing,” he said.
Take-Out Tip of the Day: Order from APL, Help Feed People in Need
04/17/2020
Los Angeles, CA
Feed yourself and feed someone in need.
Feed yourself and feed someone in need. For every meal ordered from APL Restaurant in Hollywood for takeout or curbside pickup, the steakhouse will donate the same meal to someone at the St. Joseph Center in Venice, a non-profit that provides support to homeless families and individuals and others in need.The meal-matching program is a joint effort between APL chef-restaurateur Adam Perry Land and his buddy Jimmy Kimmel.
APL’s takeout is fairly affordable and casual, more inline with the barbecue offerings the restaurant does for lunch than its steakhouse dinners. There are chili dogs, pulled pork sandwiches, BBQ brisket, fried chicken and fried pork chops. But, If you’re looking to splurge (and get a steak for someone at the St. Joseph Center), there is a $42 NY Strip.
Heroes Among Us: Helpful Honda delivers goods to seniors in need
04/09/2020
Los Angeles, CA
Heroes Among Us: Helpful Honda helps out seniors in need Helpful Honda is doing its part to help seniors in need during the coronavirus pandemic.
– Helpful Honda is doing its part to deliver goods to seniors who need it the most.
It’s a collaborative effort with the St. Joseph Center who works to create “hope through empowerment.”
Blanca Lopez, a Case Manager with the St. Joseph Center said she’s grateful that Helpful Honda has stepped up the help her cause.
Together, they have been able to deliver baskets to Southern California seniors with items ranging from toilet paper to milk.
“They’re always looking out for us,” a recipient said. “It’s been hard because the stores have been crowded with long lines.”
Helpful Honda is also assisting local businesses by purchasing items from them. Fresh fruits, masks, and products included in the baskets are purchased from local restaurants.
Do you know of a person or company that is going above and beyond to help others during this time? We want to hear from you, submit your nomination here.
St. Joseph Center works with local and national media to share news about our mission to address homelessness and poverty in the community. If you are interested in conducting media coverage of St. Joseph Center, please get in touch with us at publicrelations@stjosephctr.org