As more patients arrive at Atlanta-area hospitals, restaurants across Atlanta are teaming up to feed medical personnel on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Castellucci Hospitality Group (CHG) has launched Meals for the Frontline, a program that provides meals to ICU and emergency room medical teams and volunteers. The restaurant group, which comprises seven restaurant concepts in metro Atlanta including the Iberian Pig, Cooks & Soldiers and Bar Mercado, has partnered with Piedmont Hospital and Emory University Hospital to provide meals to ICU and emergency room medial teams and volunteers.
Each of the company’s restaurant online ordering pages contains an option to add a Frontline Meal to take-out/delivery order for $15. For every Frontline Meal purchased, the company matches that meal, ensuring two meals are delivered for each $15 donation.
Henri’s Bakery, which has three locations in Atlanta, is encouraging its customers to donate meals to medical personnel and first responders. Donors can place any amount of meals, with one meal for $10. For any orders of 100 or more sack lunches, Henri’s Bakery adds on 50% more meals for free – so a donation of 100 meals actually delivers 150 to medical facilities or first responders facilities around metro Atlanta. As of April 15, 2020, 284 people had donated 5,157 lunches, with Henri’s matching 2,578 of those, making for a total of 7,735 meals donated.
Eight Atlanta restaurants and catering groups have joined forces to provide a boxed meal for more than 8,000 employees throughout the month of April. As part of that collaborative, Bold Catering & Design is providing 1,800 boxed lunches a week during the month of April for healthcare workers at Grady Healthcare System and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Hughes Spalding Hospital in downtown Atlanta. Bold Catering has also provided 800 meals for the Atlanta Police Department.
And Atlanta-based Tropical Smoothie Cafe is donating 100,000 smoothies across the country to healthcare workers as part of its “In It Together Campaign.”
Even a one-time donation can have a big impact. Tiny Lou’s, the restaurant at the Hotel Clermont in Atlanta, recently donated 100 meals to medical personnel at Grady Memorial Hospital in honor of National Doctor’s Day, which was March 30. And Little Bear, a restaurant that just opened in February in the Summerhill neighborhood of Atlanta, recently donated individual size seven-course Spanish dinners to the night shift crew at Northside Hospital.
