Isabella, Organizer at Feed the Frontlines NYC, Manhattan
By Jonathan Zwickel
Shift Change tells the stories of ordinary people on the frontlines during a transformational period in American life. The goal of this project is to raise funds for Supply Drop Brooklyn, a charitable organization that partners with local restaurants to deliver meals to healthcare workers at affected hospitals. Your help can make a critical difference. Please visit Supply Drop and learn how you can make a contribution. For more information about this project, check out our About page.
Isabella is a senior at Harvard University. Three weeks ago she and her family founded Feed the Frontlines, an organization that’s supplying free meals from her family’s restaurants and other NYC establishments to hospital workers. This is her story.
How did Feed the Frontlines get started?
My father Luca owns five restaurants around New York City. When de Blasio ordered that all restaurants close their doors, he had to shut down four of his five restaurants. He had to lay off 95 of his 102 employees. It was devastating to him and his employees and their families living paycheck to paycheck. My father is from Italy, but he’s lived here for more than half of his life. He opened his first cafe in New York City in the East Village in 2001, just six weeks before September 11. And then the anthrax attack happened and my brother, who was about seven months old at the time, got sick. So my family has been through a lot in New York, but the restaurants have always survived.
I’m a senior in college and all this started to happen. I was mourning the end of my senior year at Harvard with my friends but then I came home and saw what my dad and the restaurants were going through. It was a total nightmare. We had a friend reach out. She asked to order dinners from us and have them delivered to a hospital. She got in touch with the head of the emergency department at NYU Langone and we delivered 40 dinners that night, on March 19th.
The people who came to greet my parents were so grateful — they’re scared and feel forgotten and undernourished. They don’t have time to think about what to eat, let alone slip some food past their protective equipment. My mom posted a picture on her Facebook and got a great response, so my dad said if there’s demand at Langone there must be demand at other hospitals. It seems like a way to meet demand and also keep our lights on as a way to survive this crisis. My dad asked if I could put together a website to raise money and expand the number of meals we can do. So that’s what we started doing — getting orders from hospitals. People gave so much money, $25,000 the first day, $100,000 by the following week. Now it’s over $700,000 — and this is all really small contributions. The average payment is under $200. That gives you a sense of how many people are contributing.
I’ve had people reaching out from all over the country saying we see what you’re doing in NYC. Can we bring it to our community? I say absolutely — our goal is to share.
So it’s taken off in the last week.
We’ve raised about three quarters of a million dollars and we’ve served over 15,000 meals in New York City alone. It’s difficult to coordinate because we’re reliant on these funds coming in online and we’re bringing in more restaurant partners, but we want to tell them to rely on us for funds to be able to collectively deliver at least 2,000 meals a day for the next three weeks. We just had a foundation here in NY that’s committed to giving us a sizable grant to help over the next 45 days.
How are you holding up?
I didn’t imagine two weeks ago this would grow into what it is now. I had a sense there was a need for the work but I didn’t think we’d have served over 15,000 meals right now or that my days would be filled with calls with donors and restaurants and hospitals. This is a way I’m able to direct my energy in a productive way, so that feels good. At the same time, it’s been hard to balance still being a student. I have to make a decision by the end of the day today whether I want to graduate this semester. Right now I’m putting all my work aside to focus on this because it’s a full-time job. There’s always more that can be done, logistical pieces and people to get in touch with. I’m working on that balance and also taking care of myself a little bit.
Who are you working with?
We’re a family of four: me, my father who owns the restaurant, my younger brother who’s a freshman at Williams College, and my mother who has her own job. And a legion of friends that I’ve assembled, who’ve been helping with social media and outreach and web design. We’ve had to throw it together quickly, but it’s working well.
We linked this organization to my father’s restaurant, where I’m sitting right now on the Upper West Side. Because we’re not in a fiscal sponsorship we can’t accept many larger donations, which usually rely on tax relief. [Most] foundations can only give to 501(c)(3)s. We’ve been grappling with that decision because we wanna be clear this is serving a dual purpose. We’re not currently making a profit. We’re just breaking even and paying people for the work they’re doing. We’re doing this out of a need for survival, both restaurants and hospital workers.
It seems like jumping into action so quickly has helped you make a significant impact right from the start.
There’s no time to talk about the process or organizational structure. This demands fast and sharp work. You cannot waste any time, which is why it’s frustrating when we talk to New York foundations spinning their wheels right now. This is what we’ve done, look at our numbers, we’re meeting people for deliveries, look at what people have said and what we’ve done in two weeks. People want to be able to help but they don’t know how to step out of the normal way of doing things. We need to put that aside and figure out what works.
What’s been the hardest part?
Having physicians call you on the phone to thank you and burst into tears. I’ve had that experience several times. People are excited and grateful but also overcome with emotion. They’re just happy someone is thinking about them, and they’re desperate to get their people help. I talked to a nurse yesterday and they had to go to eight patients per nurse; under normal circumstances they have four per nurse, so they’re doing double the work and not getting paid for it. But they’re doing it because it’s what they have to do. They’re working under extraordinary conditions.
Triage.
That word applies to the medical profession but it also applies to us. We’re getting calls from the pharmacy department telling us they’re overwhelmed. That’s true but we would prefer to get to the COVID ICU at Elmhurst or over at Sinai. We’re trying to triage on our end, too.
Visit Supply Drop Brooklyn for more information.
Learn more about Feed the Frontlines at feedthefrontlinesnyc.org.
This story has been updated to clarify that most, but not all, foundations can only grant awards to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.
