Donors fund the meals, local cooks are paid to prepare them, and community groups get the food to people facing hunger.
Tony Robbins was 11 when a stranger showed up at his family’s door with Thanksgiving dinner. His family couldn’t afford the meal that year. What stayed with him was the feeling that someone had noticed and cared enough to show up.
“It wasn’t just the food. It was knowing that somebody cared,” Robbins said in a Nov. 10 announcement from Shef, an online marketplace for local cooks.
Robbins, a Shef investor, is backing the company’s new Neighbors Feeding Neighbors initiative. Shef says it aims to feed 100,000 people facing food insecurity this holiday season and plans to continue the program beyond the holidays. Original announcement
Here’s how a donation becomes dinner. People can give once or set up a monthly contribution. Shef uses the money to place paid orders with participating cooks, who prepare and package the meals. Community partners then distribute the food. Shef named City Harvest in New York, Food Lifeline in Seattle and Houston Food Bank among its distribution partners.
“When someone cooks a meal for a neighbor they may never meet, they’re saying something we all need to hear sometimes. You matter, and someone is thinking of you,” said Bruce Petillo, founder of Heartitude.
Decades later, Robbins still remembers one Thanksgiving dinner and the stranger who brought it to his door. This holiday season, local cooks and community groups are working together to bring a meal like that to more tables.