IT ALL started with a phone call AT the Height of the pandemic . . .

It all started with a phone call at the height of the pandemic.

 

In a normal business scenario, there would be time to plan or consider the pitfalls, but we didn’t have that luxury. People were hungry. They needed to eat. And we needed to act fast.

 

Before the pandemic, one of our co-founders, Mammad, had volunteered at a soup kitchen in Ridgewood, Queens. He had seen firsthand the socio-economic gaps experienced by many of the Queens residents. It was easy for him to imagine how the pandemic had widened those gaps. New York was hit hard in those first few weeks — the media referred to the city as the epicenter of the pandemic. But they were calling Queens “the epicenter within the epicenter,” and with good reason. Some of the most financially challenged people in the city were living there, the pandemic had hit hard, and the community was left devastated.

Father Mike—our friend at Hungry Monk in Queens—called with the word from the frontlines and we knew that we had to act right away. Before COVID, the Hungry Monk’s “warm houses” project served people who were trying to get back on their feet after experiencing homelessness. The pandemic called him to step up in a whole new way. “Most of the pantries and kitchens have closed,” he told us. “There are no donations from restaurants as they are all shut down.”

 

In Ridgewood, there were often 2000+ people lined up for food. Although Mike was initially serving his local community, he started getting calls from as far afield as Bushwick and the Lower East Side. The story over the phone was always the same: There wasn’t enough food to go around. The number of people who needed help was increasing and the number of places offering it was plummeting.  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) even called him about her neighborhood in the Bronx, and showed up to help him serve her constituents.

East Village Loves Queens

After the call from Father Mike, we began concentrating on fundraising. We’d helped a few local cafes stay afloat at the beginning of the pandemic and seen a lot of generosity in the East Village, so we focused locally. What we quickly realized though, is that Queens seemed a world away to a lot of the people around us. To build a bridge between our two communities, we originally called our project East Village Loves Queens. 

Father Mike let us know that the greatest need was cooked food, so although we’d provided thousands of pantry packs, we began cooking, too. Without hesitation, our friend Ali Sahin from C&B Cafe on East 7th Street gave us the keys to his kitchen. We started collecting donations and cooking in the evenings when Ali’s day shift was over. On the first day in the tiny space, we made 600 meals which were picked up and distributed in Queens.

 

After that, we gathered volunteers, raised funds and cooked on a regular basis. The size of C&B Cafe’s kitchen and COVID safety measures meant so we had to juggle timing and carefully organize shifts to keep each other safe.

National Crisis

Eight weeks in, a second wave of challenges to the country arrived with news of the murder of George Floyd. We were all heartbroken, and New York City erupted with outrage. Many of our team joined the Black Lives Matter protests on Saturdays and cooked on Sundays.

 

Taking advantage of the police’s distraction with the protests, some groups of outsiders looted and vandalized businesses in the East Village. Unfortunately our host kitchen, C&B Cafe, was hit. Though our friend Ali was able to begin rebuilding quickly, Howard Brandstein from Sixth Street Community Center stepped in and offered us use of the center. A new partnership was born. 

Sixth Street Community Center

At Sixth Street we gained much more space, so we were able to expand our efforts. At Cafe C&B we could cook around 600 meals. But with the new space, we could cook up to 4000 meals in a day.

 

This meant that our food started getting sent all around the city to different shelters and other boroughs that were in need due to the pandemic. The Hungry Monk would send an ambulance to collect the food at the end of each shift for distribution.

 

As time went by other locations started reaching out to us. By the end of the first year of operation we were delivering food to over 25 organizations across the five boroughs and Long Island.

Rebranding to EVLovesNYC

Our aim was always to build bridges between the East Village and some of the more underserved communities in New York.

 

Although the pandemic is less of a threat in the city right now, its aftermath has left many in the city financially devastated, and broadened socio-economic gaps.

 

We are working with community leaders to fill those gaps, provide empowerment projects to help people get back on their feet after COVID, and make sure the city that we love is rebuilt from the ground up. It made sense to rebrand into EVLovesNYC because we moved from serving Queens to serving far and wide in the five boroughs.

Now we serve over 70 organizations who come to pick up food from us and distribute it all over the city.

 

Some of the unique features of our work include the fact that we value the dignity of everyone who we serve. That means that we don’t serve basic meals. Instead we have a number of volunteer chefs representing nations all around the world. They spend significant time planning menus, and contribute unique recipes so that the food that we make represents the different cultures of NYC. We also make vegan meals as well as meat dishes each week. We are sensitive to cultural and religious needs too. The food that we cook is tasty, healthy, and varied. We have learned to do this on a very minimal budget, so that we can make a nutritious meal for around $2.

We continue to strive for food security and for supporting all our neighbors in need with healthy and nutritious meals, so that they can thrive with dignity and self-respect.

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