ALAMEDA — The city is starting a program that will feed those in need while giving a boost to local restaurants struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Called “Feed Alameda,” the program will pay local restaurants to provide up to 90 meals each week to Alameda’s homeless men, women and children. It will start Jan. 20.
“People really need some good news right now,” Sarah Henry, a city spokeswoman, said in an interview. “This is a win-win situation. This is a critical time for restaurants. People are really hurting. We want to help them and people who are hungry.”
As of Wednesday morning, the deadline, approximately 40 restaurants had applied to take part in the program, which the city will fund for 11 weeks.
But it could last longer: The effort includes a GoFundMe campaign where the community can donate money to keep it going through June.
People are responding: $23,728 had been raised as of Friday. The goal is to reach $27,000.
Restaurants will be given $25 from the city for each hot meal over 11 weeks. Twelve businesses will be chosen in a random lottery, Henry said. But that number could grow, depending on how the donations pan out.
The city’s money is coming out of what was set aside in its budget for economic development, Henry said.
The idea to launch the support program emerged after Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft was on a conference call with other mayors.
“COVID-19 has been especially hard on our most vulnerable community members and our restaurants, so we modeled this program on the National Restaurant Association’s ‘Let Restaurants Do the Cooking’ campaign that I learned about on a conference call with other U.S. mayors,” Ashcraft said in a statement.
Meals must be hot, nutritious and low in sodium, with a fruit and vegetable, and provide a main course. Chain restaurants are excluded from taking part.
The effort aims to expand on the local “Dine and Connect” program, which involves local faith-based groups that feed and help homeless people in Alameda.
There were 99 people living in sheltered accommodation, but without permanent housing, and 132 people were on the streets in Alameda in 2019, according to Alameda County’s latest Point-in-Time survey.
Among the restaurants wanting to participate in “Feed Alameda” is Speisekammer, a German-themed place on Lincoln Avenue that has an outdoor patio, offers live music and serves up such dishes as “Huhn-Schnitzel,” (chicken with roasted potatoes and bacon, onion and pickled German salad), and “Fritierter Rosenkohl,” (fried brussels sprouts with pumpkin seeds and lemon cream).
“It’s been scary,” Speisekammer co-owner Cindy Kahl said during an interview about how the pandemic has hit the restaurant industry. “It’s really depressing, I have to say. We are basically going from week-to-week. We do not know how much longer we can hold on.”
Before the pandemic, the restaurant had 44 employees. Now it has about eight, Kahl said.
“All we are doing is take-out,” she said.
Participating in “Feed Alameda” would give the restaurant a much-needed lift, Kahl said.
Meals cooked for the program will go to the Midway Shelter of Alameda, which helps homeless women and their children; residents of the four FEMA trailers now at the former Alameda Naval Air Station that shelter the homeless who show symptoms of the coronavirus; and to those living in their cars who use a designated overnight parking area at the former Navy base.
The Alameda Point Collaborative, which provides housing and other services at the former base for people who were once homeless, will help coordinate the program.
The meals will be dropped off at Twin Towers United Methodist Church on Central Avenue, where volunteers will then pick them up and distribute them to those in need.
Among those supporting the effort are Alameda Rotary, the Alameda Police Officers Association, the Alameda Chamber of Commerce and Alameda Firefighter’s Local 689.
More information, including a link to the GoFundMe campaign, can be found at www.alamedaca.gov/feedalameda.
