Two Friends, 700 Meals, One Goal: Keep The Frontline Fed

As the battle to combat COVID-19 raged on, Michael Placido was fighting nonstop on the frontline.

A registered nurse at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, Placido works on the vascular access team, placing IV lines in patients. 12-hour workdays have been the norm for him over the last few months, and he’s even picked up per diem shifts at another hospital. Between working seven days a week and having little time to see his husband – who is also a nurse at a different hospital – things as simple as cooking dinner added to the stress.

Then he read about a group of volunteers in his hospital’s newsletter: Front Line Family Meals Boston was providing free home cooked dinners to nurses, doctors and frontline workers in the area. They were being made with love by 12 volunteers who all had experience in the restaurant industry.

Placido couldn’t believe it. He visited the group’s website and reserved a meal. Before he knew it, he was eating made-from-scratch lasagna with his husband that he didn’t have to plan out or cook.

"It's so heartwarming to be recognized and something so small as a home cooked meal meant so much, Placido said.

The initiative began in late-April when best friends Beth Schunke and Sara Sweet Rabidoux-Kelsey started to discuss how they could do their part to help frontline workers. Both women work in the restaurant industry; Schunke is director of operations at Hawkeye Hospitality, Rabidoux-Kelsey is a bartender. Both recently stopped working because of COVID-19.

They wanted to use their food service experience to help, but had heard through friends and family that hospitals were already inundated with food during shifts. So they came up with another plan: they would cook and donate dinners for workers to take home to their families.

"I remember when I worked restaurant hours, 60 to 70 hours a week, and it was so hard to come home and put a smile on my face and put dinner on the table,” Schunke said. 

“I couldn't even imagine after being in that war zone to have to go home and cook dinner for your family.”

At first, the women planned a small operation. It would be just them and they would make around 20 meals a week. But then, Schunke put on her “director of operations” hat and figured out a plan to make more meals to serve more people.

They found a network of 12 people who were ServSafe certified, meaning they have taken food and alcohol safety exams as foodservice professionals. They wrote out protocols to ensure they were all safe while shopping for ingredients, cooking the meals, and providing them to frontline workers. A GoFundMe  page was started with an original goal of $3,000.

Within days, they’d raised over $17,000.

More than 70 meals were cooked and donated the first week. Every week after that, it only increased. To date, they’ve provided around 700 meals to workers across Boston.

One of those workers was Larissa Engleman, a nurse practitioner at Beth Israel. Engleman’s co-worker and her co-worker’s husband both contracted COVID-19, leaving their six children to fend for themselves. Engleman dropped off food to the family on multiple occasions that included lasagna and chicken pot pie. 

“The family was so grateful,” Engleman said. “And the quality was impeccable.” 

Engleman even used the service for her own family.  

“It was the highlight of the evening,” she said. 

FLFM is cooking delicious comfort food that includes shepherd's pie, enchiladas, chicken ziti bake, meat, and cheese lasagne, tikka masala tofu or chicken, beef stroganoff, meatballs and pasta, chicken pot pie, chicken paprikash, and meatloaf. The team holds meal pickups at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. 

"Beth and I just want to help," Rabidoux-Kelsey said. "There are limited ways to help in this scenario, and we just want to say thanks and be of service."

Schunke couldn’t agree more.

"I want the frontline workers to know we thought about them, their sacrifice, and their families, and we want them to enjoy the time they have at home and worry about one less thing," Schunke said. 

Placido was so thankful for the homemade lasagna he and his husband received, he sent a letter to the president of the Beth Israel Medical Center about how much Schunke and Rabidoux-Kelsey’s efforts meant to him.

"It's beyond words can describe," Placido said. "They are so caring to take the time out of their day to think about us on the front lines. It means so much."

You can reserve a spot for a meal on FLFM's website if you’re a medical professional on the front lines in the Boston area. And you can donate to their effort on their GoFundMe page. 

The proceeds from the GoFundMe that aren't used will be donated to the Greater Boston Food Bank. FLFM already donated $5,000 to help the food bank after a call for more resources in mid-April.