The Seafood for Heroes program, organized and managed by way of the Napa Seafood Basis, is utilizing donations from seafood corporations to offer wholesome meals to first responders in Ukraine by way of the World Central Kitchen.
The Seafood for Heroes program was fashioned within the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a method for seafood corporations taking part within the Napa Seafood Basis to present again to first-responders and healthcare employees on the entrance strains.
“When COVID hit, we bought collectively as a bunch and stated ‘What can we do?’” The Meals Group CEO Mark Cotter, who serves as a board member of the Napa Seafood Basis, instructed SeafoodSource.
The concept past the muse was to offer seafood meals for frontline employees who have been typically working lengthy hours in troublesome circumstances. Via members’ assist, inside months of the primary indicators of the pandemic Seafood for Heroes was born and already serving to healthcare employees.
The concept, Cotter stated, was to assist each the healthcare employees and the struggling restaurant business by offering funding and elements for meals to eating places that had additional capability as a result of lack of demand through the peak of the pandemic.
“The concept was about serving to the restaurant business, in addition to serving to frontline employees,” Cotter stated.
Quickly after the ball was rolling, Seafood for Heroes was already on the bottom offering meals for healthcare employees in New York Metropolis, which was hit arduous by COVID-19 within the early days of the pandemic in 2020.
“We have been shopping for hundreds of meals from a pair impartial eating places to service main hospital teams in locations like Queens, New York,” Cotter stated.
With time, this system expanded past the extra native efforts to a nationwide marketing campaign, assisted by a partnership with Crimson Lobster. The core idea, Cotter stated, was to get the seafood and funding to eating places close to areas that wanted assist in order that these eating places may then do what they do greatest – serve meals.
Cotter stated the healthcare employee teams have been thrilled to have wholesome seafood meals – particularly as a result of it was totally different from a number of the issues they have been getting.
“They have been so blissful to get one thing wholesome, and one thing they may take residence after their shift,” Cotter stated. “That was vital to us, we’re giving them one thing wholesome.”
Whereas this system’s genesis was amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it grew to become obvious shortly that it didn’t want to finish there.
“We stated ‘Hey, we’ve bought one thing right here that’s extendable, it doesn’t have to finish with COVID,’” Cotter stated.
When tornadoes struck the U.S. states of Kentucky and Arkansas, Seafood for Heroes shortly mobilized to offer meals by way of Crimson Lobster and different impartial eating places to these on the bottom serving to decide up the items.
Most not too long ago, the group has centered in on Ukraine, working to assist increase cash and supply meals by way of World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit group that gives meals in response to humanitarian disaster. Via the handfuls of seafood corporations that present a mix of funding and seafood, the Seafood for Heroes program is utilizing the assets the business already has accessible to assist these in want shortly, Cotter stated.
“When any disaster occurs, we might be there, making ready nice seafood, wholesome meals for these in want, for these serving to others,” Cotter stated.
Photograph courtesy of Seafood for Heroes
