Feed the Frontlines Boulder
Update May 19, 2020
We have now delivered 17,297 meals and raised $687K from over 1,400 individual donors and businesses!
We just added the Open Space and Mountain Parks rangers as well as EMS.
Our original mission was to deliver meals to the front line team at BCH, yet it quickly expanded to a number of other partner organizations thanks to the outpouring of generosity from the community. We’ve essentially added almost all of the facilities we can support under the mission of the BCH Foundation (the non-profit we are working with).
Fortunately, the number of COVID-19 cases has seen a dramatic reduction over the past month allowing the BCH team and other participating organizations to start to resume normal operations. In addition, we are hopeful that the community’s efforts to continue to flatten the curve will lead to allowing restaurants to further ramp up their businesses in the coming weeks.
Given all of these factors, we’ve decided the following:
- We’re going to stop additional fundraising as of today.
- We’ll continue meal delivery through July 3rd, which in our current projections will use up the funds raised.
- Any remaining funds after the July 3rd date will be rolled into the broader BCH Foundation COVID-19 Response Fund which is targeted toward removing any barriers for the best treatment for COVID-19 as well as supporting BCH employees that are facing financial hardships.
This is all subject to change if we see any significant changes with either COVID-19 cases or local/state measures and we will be sure to update everyone if the timeline shifts.
On behalf of the Feed the Frontlines Boulder team, we would like to thank the Boulder community for your generosity and support. It’s been incredible to see everyone come together to help both frontline workers and local restaurants!
-> The Feed the Frontlines Boulder team
Update April 22, 2020
It’s been a while since our last update! We have now delivered over 6700 meals, and have raised over $600K!
Thanks to the generosity of the community we’ve been able to expand the frontline facilities we’re supporting with meals. In addition to BCH Foothills, we’re now also supporting the Boulder Fire-Rescue Department, Clinica family health in Lafayette and Boulder, and the Boulder Police Department. We’ll be continuing to work on expanding to additional facilities in the coming weeks.
We also got covered on 9NEWS this past Friday, and were mentioned in Global Citizen.
We also wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the companies and organizations that have contributed up in a big way.
- Zayo
- Aurora Organic Dairy
- Twitter Boulder
- Google Boulder
- The Denver Toyota Dealers Association
- BSW Wealth Partners
- HungryBuffs
- Boulder Startup Week
Thank you for your generosity!
-> The Feed the Frontlines Boulder team
Update April 9, 2020
We’re excited to announce that we’ve reached our initial goal of funding over 60 days of meals, with $414K raised as of this posting! Thank you to everyone in the community that helped make this happen via donations, volunteering, or getting the word out.
We’ve also delivered over 2500 meals to BCH Foothills from 9 different restaurants.
We’ve added 14 new restaurants — Snarf’s, Ali Baba Grill, Rincon Argentino, Shine, T/ACO, Kalita Grill, The Sink / West Flanders, Organic Sandwich Company, The Front Range Catering Company, Cured, Rosetta Hall (Rose’s, La Tigella, Tierra, Jacaranda, Confit, Ginger Pig), Sherpa’s, Wayne’s Smoke Shack and River and Woods. (Note: All of the restaurants in the program sign a pledge that the profits from the program will go toward keeping staff on payroll and supporting them.)
We’ve decided to expand beyond BCH Foothills to other Boulder County organizations — be on the lookout next week for an announcement!
Finally, we’ve decided to bump our goal up to $500K so we can support more people in Boulder County on the frontlines against COVID-19 and more restaurants.
-> The Feed the Frontlines Boulder team
What an amazing first week! We wanted to update everyone on what’s happened this first week and what we’re planning to do next.
- We are closing in on our goal of having meals for two months with over $355K raised from hundreds of people in the Boulder community.
- We’ve had 5 days of meals delivered without any significant issues to BCH Foothills.
- We were covered by the CBS 4 News, Boulder Daily Camera, Denver Post, Westword, Boulder Weekly, 303 Mag and Denver Business Journal.
- We’ve had dozens of people across Colorado (and beyond) reach out to us about starting something similar in their community, as well as many Boulder community members reach out to offer their help.
- We’ve had over 40 local restaurants say they’re interested in joining the program.
Here’s what we’re working on next
- We’re going to onboard more restaurants over the coming weeks. The current plan is to roll in about ~3 to 6 additional restaurants per week.
- We’re looking into expanding to other facilities beyond BCH Foothills that we can support with meals.
- We’ll integrate more volunteers from the community to help keep things running smoothly.
Thank you to everyone who donated, helped get the word out, and reached out to volunteer!
Health workers at Boulder Community Health and across Boulder County are gearing up for battle against COVID-19. At the same time, local independent restaurants that are a big part of our community are suffering from the devastating economic impact of the virus.
We are members of the Boulder community that decided to do something to support both frontline health workers and local independent restaurants. We’ve created a program that lets the community donate meals from local restaurants to health workers on the frontlines. Health workers get a nourishing meal, and local restaurants get badly needed business to keep running and keep staff employed.
We need your help! Please donate here: bch.org/feedthefrontlines
We’ve already raised $200,000 to kickstart the program from Brad Feld and Amy Batchelor, Dan and Cindy Caruso, John Goldsmith, and an anonymous donor. This covers the first 30 days of meals for the hospital but we need more help. Our goal is to raise at least an additional $200,000 from the Boulder community to keep meals flowing from local restaurants to BCH for at least 60 days.
We’ve partnered with Boulder Community Health and several local restaurants including Salt, Big Red F Restaurant Group, Kitchen Next Door, Japango, Blackbelly/Santo, and Community Kitchen Table to get this off the ground. The food services partner at the hospital, BCH Food Services, has generously offered their trained staff and facilities to help receive, distribute, and store the meals delivered by the restaurants.
Once we get this program off the ground, in the coming weeks we’ll look at expanding further across Boulder County to support other health care workers as funding allows and also add to the list of local restaurants participating in the program.
We need your help to get to 60 days of meals! Please donate here: bch.org/feedthefrontlines
One more ask: Boulder Community Health also needs sealed/unopened boxes of masks, gloves, unopened hand sanitizer, or other PPE. You can drop off PPE at Foothills Hospital Information Desk at 4747 Arapahoe, Monday thru Friday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and weekends 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Please include your name and full contact information with your donation. When you arrive at the main Foothills entrance (do not go to the Emergency Department entrance), call the Information Desk at 303–415–7010 to let the know the staff you are outside. They will meet you at the door to pick up your donation.
Are you a restaurant that wants to join the program?
If you’re a Boulder County independent restaurant wanting to participate, sign up here on this form. We’re working toward a diversity of geography and ownership as we roll this out.
Want to run this in your community?
Here is a program outline we created to help.
The goal isn’t just to help Boulder and Boulder County. Once we show the program working here, we hope it can serve as template of how to roll this out across Colorado.
We’ve been working to also make sure we “open source” everything we are doing and figuring out. Feedback is very welcome, and please let us know if you start using it!
Local resources for COVID-19
Here’s a website about COVID-19 from Boulder Community Hospital that is a great source of trusted information.
Want to help or reach out to us?
You can email Vikas Reddy at v@vikasreddy.io and/or Kyle Judah at Kyle.Judah@colorado.edu .
Inspiration and gratitude
We were inspired by this amazing effort in San Francisco by Frank Barbieri and Ryan Sarver. We greatly appreciate their advice and sharing of materials which helped us get something up and running in Boulder.
Grant Besser, President of the non-profit BCH Foundation has been amazing to work with, and the BCH Foundation team has moved incredibly quickly and creatively to help us pull this off in just about 1 week.
The first set of restaurants and owners have been very helpful in getting this program up and running. Thank you to Dana and Dave Query at Big Red F Restaurant Group, Bradford Heap at Salt, Hosea Rosenberg at Santo/Blackbelly, Isabel McDevitt at Community Table Kitchen, Jon Banis from Japango, and Kimbal Musk - CEO of The Kitchen Restaurant Group.
We also want to give a special shout out to Frasca Hospitality Group who is not currently operating in Boulder, but allowed Erin Pommer to work with us on this effort. Erin has been instrumental in making this happen.
Most importantly, for all the health workers at BCH Foothills or anywhere on the frontlines in Boulder County, we want you to know that while you’re caring for us, the community also cares about you. Thank you for your service during this crisis.
With hope, love, and gratitude,
The Feed the Frontlines Boulder team
- Vikas Reddy, BCH Foundation board member and Co-Founder of Occipital
- Kyle Judah, Exec Director of Entrepreneurship, CU Boulder College of Engineering
- Erin Pommer, Brand Director of Frasca Hospitality Group
- Amy Batchelor, BCH Foundation board member and managing director of the Anchor Point Foundation
- Austin Braun, Social & Digital Media Strategist
- Callie Sumlin, PR & Marketing Manager at Big Red F Restaurant Group
- Courtney Walsh, Office of Kimbal Musk
- Greg Lyons, Product Manager at Twitter Boulder
- John Goldsmith, Venture Investor, Corporate Director and Advisor
- Bryan Birsic, Cofounder and Board Member of Wunder Capital
