Santa Clarita Valley restaurants are calling on their customers to help them show their appreciation for Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital staff amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our No. 1 focus was to provide healthy meals to our frontline fighters,” Eat Real Cafe co-owner Tatiana Chao said. “We have friends in the medical field, my cousins are nurses. They’re not able to be with their family during this time, and their bravery was so amazing to me, so it just kind of grew from there. I just had to do something.”
In order to bring the community together safely to accomplish this goal, Eat Real Cafe owners Tatiana and Daniel Chao came up with the Feed the Frontline program, which allows customers to purchase a meal for their local health care workers, with weekly donation dropoffs to the hospital.
“It was going really well, and just in the first couple of days, we got like 25 orders,” Tatiana Chao added. “So, I reached out to our friends over at Marston’s Restaurant, and they immediately jumped on board.”
“We were looking for something to do, but didn’t know anybody to partner up with … so it just gave us the impetus to do something really nice to help the people out over there (at the hospital),” Marston’s chef/owner Jim McCardy added.
While their goal was 100 this month, Eat Real Cafe and Marston’s were able to collect enough donations to drop off more than that in just the first week.
Soon, Chao got a call from The Sandwich Spot in Stevenson Ranch, also wanting to join in, and they’re calling on other restaurants to join their ranks.
“Everyone’s separate, but we’re also promoting each other on social media and getting to know each other’s clients and customers,” Chao said. “It’s really been fun. It’s just been a cool way to get to know other restaurant owners and the staff at Henry Mayo.”
While each restaurant chooses their specific meal, each costs $15. For more information on the Feed the Frontline program, call Eat Real Cafe at 661-888-1329, Marston’s Restaurant at 661-253-9910 or The Sandwich Spot at 661-383-9940.
