After reversing the decision to reopen Escobar Lounge on April 27, co-owners Mychel "Snoop" Dillard and rapper 2Chainz used their restaurant's inventory to feed the homeless and provide meals to residents in the neighborhood. Rather than welcoming customers for its first dine-in service in weeks, Escobar Lounge instead served hundreds of meals to the needy - all while practicing social distancing and taking recommended safety precautions.
“With the city reopening, we wanted to make sure we focused on who and what’s important to the city of Atlanta, the community, the people,” said Dillard and 2 Chainz in a joint statement.
To help with the service, Escobar Lounge partnered with volunteers from the TRU Foundation, HERImpact Foundation, friends and locals from the community.
The business partners’ joint statement emphasized that philanthropy would continue to be part of the restaurant’s strategy to help with the fight against COVID-19. Today and over the past week, Dillard and 2Chainz each personally helped distribute the hundreds of meals donated through their restaurant.
More Good Deeds:
Curry Up Now, the nationwide Indian fast-casual restaurant with a location in Decatur, has launched a program called Roll It Forward to donate free meals to healthcare workers. With deliveries starting on May 6, Nurses Appreciation Day, customers can now add an extra donated entree (or as many they like, up to 100) to any order; Curry Up Now will then double that donation and deliver two meals to nurses and healthcare professionals. The restaurant chain has already begun taking donations and will match the donated meals as well as deliver them on a regular basis to hospitals, recently unemployed or furloughed hospitality workers and others who have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Learn more and order from Curry Up Now at curryupnow.com.
City Barbeque, a fast-casual barbecue chain out of Columbus, OH, has delivered more than 5,000 free meals to Emory Hospital through its Healthcare Heroes initiative. The restaurant chain began the Healthcare Heroes program on April 3 which asks customers to donate $5 with their orders, which the group promises to turn into one hot meal for a healthcare worker. Nationwide, the effort has raised $120,000 and delivered more than 24,000 box lunches in 16 cities, Atlanta included. To learn more and donate to Healthcare Heroes, visit citybbq.com. If you'd like to donate without placing an order, click here.
An old-school distillery in Blairsville now produces a decidedly modern product - Grandaddy Mimm's Moonshine Distillery has begun to make hand sanitizer in place of its traditional white lightning. To date, Grandaddy Mimm's has donated thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer to healthcare workers, emergency responders and other essential workers in North Georgia. The distillery has partnered with Athens-based GA Xtracts on the project, sending 900 gallons of moonshine to Athens to be turned into hand sanitizer. Grandaddy Mimm's will also have the hand sanitizer for sale at the distillery alongside its 140-proof corn whiskey - easily high enough to be effective against the coronavirus. Learn more at mimmsmoonshine.com.
Murphy's will provide meals to frontline healthcare workers through a new partnership with Open Hand Atlanta called the COVID-19 Clinician Meal Program. Longtime Murphy's customer Felix Solaun and Bruce Griffith started the initiative to support the restaurant and show appreciation to hospital clinicians combatting the coronavirus. The program will provide regular meal deliveries facilitated by Open Hand Atlanta from Murphy's to Piedmont Hospital's ER and ICU clinicians. To learn and donate, visit covid19atlanta.org.
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