When Medium Rare steak and frites restaurant opened last year on Magazine Street , it did so with a sense of social responsibility established in the business’ founding city of Washington, D.C. At the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic, Mark Bucher, co-owner of Medium Rare, launched an initiative to deliver meals to people over 70 who were advised not to leave their homes.
“People were scared to death, literally, to leave their apartments,” Bucher explained. Without cars, they could not get in line at the food banks to get free boxes of food and people were starving. Bucher’s outreach quickly grew to include deliveries of home and personal care products, then meals to underserved students who usually received meals through free school lunch programs.
“Overnight we moved from being in the hospitality business to being humanitarians,” Bucher said.
When donations started coming in Bucher pivoted to paying struggling restaurants to prepare the meals, which were delivered by volunteers. In 2021 he founded the non-profit We Care to operate the Feed the Fridge initiative that provides free, fully-cooked, protein-rich meals in tamper-evident containers via commercial refrigerators.
“There are truly food insecure who cannot cook donated pantry goods,” Bucher said. “These people may not have can opener, a knife, a pan, a home. Prepared meals allow them to eat with dignity.”
New Orleans recently became the country’s second metro area to receive help from the program, which is seeking restaurants and catering operations to supply meals in exchange for monetary compensation. As of this writing Medium Rare, Dickie Brennan Group, Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group, the Howlin Wolf, Southern Hospitality Catering and Chef Diva Foods had signed on to supply diverse meals in a variety of cuisines to meet the standards of one-third of each produce, protein and complex carbohydrates. Meals are free of sugar and processed foods and labeled with ingredients and potential allergens. Restaurants provide meals on a pre-scheduled rotating basis.
Feed the Fridge refrigerators are increasingly cropping up around New Orleans, mostly at or near churches, public libraries, schools, fire stations, parks, senior living facilities, and community and recreational centers.
Meals are collected Monday through Friday from participating restaurants and delivered to the refrigerators, which are carefully cleaned and sanitized. Students, seniors, and others in need are invited to walk up and help themselves. No questions. No limits.
“Of course, there are going to be people who take more than they need,” Bucher said. “The refrigerators are restocked the next day. If a refrigerator breaks, we have it fixed. We know we are helping someone, and we are making it possible for in-need families to eat meals together in their homes.”
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Mark Bucher, co-owner of Medium Rare and founder of We Care and Feed the Fridge, wants to make food security attainable throughout the nation. He fries hundreds of turkeys for Thanksgiving distribution and holiday meals are hand-delivered to seniors during the holidays, including Mother’s Day.