New charity taps celebrities to raise money and meals for restaurants and frontline coronavirus workers

A new charity is looking to tap athletes and actors to help raise money and meals for both restaurants and health care workers in need. By raising money for restaurants, Project Frontline aims to employ workers who can help prepare and deliver meals to nurses and doctors on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The campaign is spearheaded by the Tampa-based A+C Foundation, a local nonprofit that partners with athletes and artists to use their platform for charitable causes. Until recently, the foundation was working with celebrities on a number of different causes. Then the first cases of the coronavirus were reported in the United States.

“All of a sudden, all of our events got canceled,” said A+C Foundation president and CEO Rob Canton. “We came up with this idea ... to bring awareness to the fact that (health care workers) are often putting in 12- to 14-hour days and often don’t have time to go to the grocery stores and cook for their families. At the same time, we had all these great relationships with restaurants across the country, so we decided to combine (the efforts): one, to help the hospital workers, and two, to get the restaurants back to work.”

It’s the latest in a series of fundraising efforts on behalf of the restaurant and hospitality community, which has been dealt an unprecedented economic blow caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So far, the effort has included celebrities like actors Quinton Aaron, Jillian Wagner and Kristen Renton, Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Chris Godwin, former MLB player Johnny Damon and former NBA pro Reggie Miller. To kick-start the campaign, the celebrities involved posted a series of videos and public service announcements about the fundraiser on their social media accounts, all of which are linked to a GoFundMe page. As of Thursday afternoon, the campaign had raised nearly $25,000.

That money is allocated by the charity to different restaurants, to purchase a certain number of meals that are then sent to local frontline coronavirus workers.

The first restaurants to partner with the organization in Tampa are Mise en Place and the kitchen staff at the Epicurean Hotel. Canton said he initially chose those two because of existing relationships with both, but said he’s already received wide interest from other Tampa Bay restaurants and hopes to include more soon.

Maryann Ferenc, who together with chef Marty Blitz runs both Mise en Place and Pass-a-Grille restaurant the Dewey, said she was able to employ 14 people on her staff to help out with this particular effort. Both restaurants have been closed for dine-in business but have been running takeout meals the past couple of weeks, which Ferenc said has helped the business stay afloat but with a fraction of their former employees.

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“All restaurants are looking for more ways that they can earn income and can keep people employed,” Ferenc said. “The beauty in this is that the difference between a la carte ordering and catering is that you know how many people you’re feeding and what they’re eating. It can be more strategic, which really helps right now because money is tight and we’re really trying to limit waste.”

Together with staff from Tampa’s Epicurean Hotel, the Mise en Place team delivered close to 500 meals to health care workers at AdventHealth Tampa on Wednesday. Employees there were treated to dinners of chicken and chorizo paella, Korean barbecue steak with lemongrass jasmine rice, and chicken shakshuka with braised greens and smashed red potatoes.

"It was an amazing experience that was laden with goodness due to the mutual gratitude,” Ferenc said afterward. “We cannot wait to go back.”

Canton said he has been in talks with restaurants in Los Angeles, Dallas and Boston, and plans to to expand the Project Frontline program to additional cities over the next couple of weeks. Ideally, he said, each city would work with multiple restaurants on different days so that daily meals could be delivered to as many hospitals as possible.

“Really, this is just the start,” he said.