PlateOnline.com is an interactive community for professional chefs, featuring the web’s largest food industry recipe database. An exhaustive national guide to sources of assistance for restaurant workers currently is being maintained, with a state-by-state listing.
Updated: These Organizations are Helping Unemployed Hospitality Workers, by
Matt Kirouac at Plate.
Here’s Kentucky:
In Lexington, VisitLEX and Keeneland Racecourse joined forces with non-profit community kitchen FoodChain to create Nourish Lexington and support local hospitality members by hiring unemployed restaurant workers to prepare meals for locals in need.
Apron Inc. is a non-profit founded in 2011 with the intent to assist independent restaurant employees struggling through situations like illnesses and natural disasters. The organization is currently offering financial aid to workers diagnosed with COVID-19, and is actively seeking more ways to raise more money and offer more assistance.
Louisville-based chef Edward Lee partnered his non-profit, The LEE Initiative, with Maker’s Mark to establish a relief distribution center at his restaurant, 610 Magnolia. The program includes much-needed supplies, meals, and essential items like toilet paper, canned goods, and baby food, all available for pickup on a nightly basis. Lee is doing the same thing at his D.C. restaurant, Succotash, as well, and Great Bagel Bakery has joined the movement as a relief outpost in Lexington, Kentucky.
To support The LEE Initiative, a newly released film called A Chef’s Voyage is donating 100% of its rental fees to the organization. The film follows chef David Kinch around France to celebrate Manresa’s 15th anniversary.
And Indiana:
Thanks to a $10,000 grant from chef Edward Lee’s The LEE Initiative, chef Joe Phillips of Pints & Union in New Albany is offering free take-and-bake meals and groceries on a nightly basis to service industry members, single parents and local non-profits.
