The National Restaurant Association today honored Charleston Chefs Feed the Need with its 2011 Restaurant Neighbor Award. The award celebrates outstanding service efforts that restaurateurs perform in their respective communities.
Based in Charleston, S.C., Feed the Need was recognized as the Mid-Size Business Category winner for providing a hot meal every Wednesday to the city’s homeless and hungry. The program is the brainchild of Mickey Bakst, general manager of the Charleston Grill restaurant. Bakst organized the program in 2009. Currently, 52 local restaurant owners staff the program, taking turns preparing food for those in need.
“The restaurant industry first and foremost is about hospitality and serving people, and community service is a natural extension of that,” said Dawn Sweeney, National Restaurant Association President and CEO. “We are pleased to present the Restaurant Neighbor Award to some of the most inspiring examples of philanthropy in our industry. The Charleston Chefs Feed the Need program has proved a highly successful way for a community to band together to help its members in need. The program can be replicated in other communities as well, which contributes to its innovative approach to philanthropy.”
Bakst said he was driven to form Feed the Need after reading in the newspaper that a homeless shelter in his city had to cut back and would be unable to feed its residents because of budgetary issues. He immediately started calling his restaurateur friends to see if they would join him to help feed those in need and they agreed. Bakst says he is determined to turn it into a national initiative.
The National Restaurant Association presented Charleston Chefs Feed the Need the award along with a $5,000 charitable contribution during its 2011 Public Affairs Conference in Washington, D.C. American Express is the founding partner of the Restaurant Neighbor Award. It was developed in 1999 in an effort to raise awareness of the industry’s contributions to local communities throughout the country and to inspire more owners and operators to get involved and contribute to their respective neighborhoods.
“American Express is proud to partner with the National Restaurant Association to honor the contributions restaurateurs across the country make to their communities,” said Curtis L. Wilson, Vice President and General Manager, Restaurant and Lodging Industries, American Express. “Through charitable gifts of food, time, and resources, restaurants have a tangible and lasting impact on their communities; we hope these actions inspire others to do the same.”
In addition to Charleston Chefs Feed the Need, the National Restaurant Association recognized three others with the 2011 Restaurant Neighbor Award. They are: Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, the Pittsburgh-based parent of the national Eat’n Park restaurant chain, in the large business category; Kona Kai Coffee Company, a gourmet coffee shop in Kent, Wash., in the small business category; and Michael Whalen, president and chief executive of Moline, Iowa-based Heart of America Restaurants, as this year’s Cornerstone Humanitarian.
For more information on the Restaurant Neighbor Award program as well as the national winners and state finalists, visit the Association’s website, www.restaurant.org/rna.