Food4Heroes: Madrid restaurants come together to cook and deliver free meals directly to hospitals
We’re an open platform with over 90 partners among restaurants and brands. We cook and distribute food for free, to support our health care workers in the fight against COVID-19. Because our heroes wear white coats and our motivation is born from their effort – Food4Heroes
We all know that Madrid is one of the hardest-hit cities in the world right now, and restaurants have had to shut their doors to the public until further notice (sans delivery and takeaway). But that hasn’t stopped them from opening up their kitchens and doing their part to make this situation better for all.
Today we’d like to give a well-deserved shout-out to the volunteer-based initiative Food4Heroes, in which over 90 Madrid establishments have come together to prepare meals and deliver them daily to hundreds of medical professionals in hospitals across the city (and the country) – especially to those working in ICU and ER.
Food4Heroes started on March 13th when the CEOs of the restaurant group Grosso Napoletano sent a WhatsApp message to all their contacts so they could deliver pizzas to Madrid’s hospitals. It went viral – hundreds of messages from medical professionals came in from dozens of different hospitals – which motivated even more partners to volunteer and join forces to show their support.
Now, Food4Heroes has become an open platform with a simple format: health care workers contact the group by email (info@grossonapoletano.com) to tell them what they need. The group collaborates with its partners to make it happen, and then they create WhatsApp groups with the health care workers to coordinate time and place of delivery. The food trucks drop off the meals outside the hospitals, normally near the ER doors, and the health care workers go out to pick it up.
It’s incredible that through WhatsApp and solidarity, hot meals are being delivered to hospitals daily. As we can see from Food4Heroes, despite all the hardship that’s going on, there’s a lot of good that’s happening as well. This is one of the many heartwarming ways in which the city is expressing its admiration and appreciation towards hospital workers, such as the citywide clap every evening (with the designated hashtag #aplausosanitario).
I found out about Food4Heroes from a member of Grupo Larrumba, one of the participating restaurant groups, who also sent me the images in this article.
Follow Food4Heroes on Instagram to get to know more about their partners and initiatives, and to show your support!
(Source: Food4Heroes’ social media & Profesional Horeca)
Do you know of any other initiatives helping to make this situation better for all?
Get in touch with us at daphne@veracontent.com and a96039@aup.edu