Restaurants were among the hardest hit of Anchorage businesses in the pandemic shutdown of March 2020. So were nonprofit service agencies and the people they serve, from toddlers to seniors.
Thousands of servers, bussers, cooks, and dishwashers were laid off or saw their hours slashed to single digits and their pay dwindle accordingly. And it wasn’t just the mandated shutdown. Even when the city eased restrictions, local diners were wary and there were no tourists. Nonprofits struggled with fewer resources as the pandemic drove up health and safety expenses and made helping harder.
So United Way of Anchorage joined Alaska Hospitality Retailers, the Alaska Community Foundation, and the Municipality of Anchorage to launch Restaurant and Hunger Relief in a triple-win use of donations and pandemic relief money – keep restaurants in business, their workers employed, and hungry Alaskans fed.
The program exceeded expectations. By the end of 2020, 16 restaurants, five of which were minority owned, had served 41,200 meals to 32 sites in Anchorage – far more than the original estimate of 30,000. That success set the table for continued private-public funding and greater restaurant participation in the first four months of 2021.
The numbers were great. But they don’t tell the whole story.
Rose Ebue, Services Coordinator for Chugach View Senior Housing, described rolling her cart down the hall with breakfasts made by Peppercini’s. The pandemic protocol called for hanging the breakfasts on residents’ door handles to minimize contact. “I have a big old cart and it’s early in the morning. It’s hard to keep that cart quiet. They know I’m coming.” So, they’re often at the door.
“If you could see the light in their faces…” Ebue said. The breakfasts were more than a meal, kindling everything from childhood memories of the smell of bacon to the encouragement of weight gain after cancer treatment. “I have people who feel they are forgotten, that they’re not thought of anymore. Sometimes they kind of shut themselves off and isolate. When you feed somebody, there’s something meaningful and kind in that.”
