Operation Thank You: Frontline Meals Launches
In our current world of COVID-19, with struggling or closed hospitality businesses and overworked frontline staff, the initiative OPERATION THANK YOU: FRONTLINE MEALS launches today. The goal of this initiative is to show our gratitude by feeding frontline workers dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemic while supporting Melbourne’s hospitality industry, who will provide meals paid for by the community. All donations can be made via the website (www.frontlinemealsmelb.org) that has gone live today. All monies will pay the hospitality businesses and see that the food is delivered to those who are working so hard for us on the frontline.
Under the banner of the Operation Thank You campaign, FrontLine Meals has connected with some leading hospitality businesses - including North Fitzroy’s Moroccan Soup Kitchen, Atlantic Group, Edge Hospitality, Dolce Gusto in Niddrie and Heart Attack & Vine in Carlton - who have put together delicious and nourishing meals to be delivered as a start to the frontline.
Doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, police and ambos are working incredibly hard to keep us alive and safe. In doing so, they are risking infection every day and being isolated from their families. This will continue for months and during this sustained period they will need good food.
FrontLine Meals has established a pilot program with the Northern Hospital in Epping to provide meals to the Fever, Respiratory and Emergency departments currently dealing with COVID-19 patients. The aim is to start delivering in early May and there are plans to expand to the greater Melbourne area and to other frontline services.
FrontLine Meals founder, Melbourne-based Corporate IT Project Manager, Natasha Oommen, says, “I just wanted to do something to help and do something positive. Food is such an integral part of our lives and this marriage of hospitality and frontline care seemed like a simple way to help our community.”
Natasha hopes that the Operation Thank You model can be built and then leveraged in times of other crises, but for now, our frontline workers and hospitality industry need our help.
The hospitality business gets paid, the frontline gets fed. It is that simple.