FIG Frontline Community Food Relief

We're FIG (Food Issues Group), a collective of chefs, farmers, educators and hospitality workers of all kinds who have been organizing together since 2015. In response to the current crisis moment, we're leaning into the trust and infrastructure we've built to redistribute resources in ways that reinforce ongoing relief efforts.

Our Frontline Community Food Relief initiative matches independent food businesses in our network with grassroots and membership-based organizations in New York’s hardest hit communities and neighborhoods — namely, those serving LGBTQ+ youths, immigrant food workers, domestic workers, people experiencing housing insecurity, and out-of-work food workers in our immediate restaurant families. 

Through these relationships, we're sourcing, cooking, and delivering thousands of meals to folks in need — and we're raising funds in order to do more.

This initiative aims to not only ease hardship now, but support FIG's vision of a more equitable food system.

We're raising funds to support the following work: 

• Boost the capacity of currently suffering independent food businesses to contribute to relief efforts, while supporting their teams with diligently regulated, safe, and reliable work environments. 
• Increase buying power to support small local producers, who continue to grow food for our region through this crisis.
• Focus on neighborhoods with limited access to reliable, safe, and healthy food by providing home and community food deliveries, thereby supporting shelter-in-place efforts and reducing the risk of exposure in these communities which are already experiencing high rates of the illness. 

Some of our grassroots and community partners include:

• Street Vendor Project
• Ali Forney Center
• Partnership with Children
• Movement for Justice in el Barrio

Our FIG Network is both wide-ranging and deeply connected. Our currently-engaged food business partners are:

• The Awkward Scone
• The Pixie & The Scout
• Eleven36
• Samesa
• Egg
• Brutus Bakeshop
• Woldy Kusina 

Some examples of ongoing successful relief efforts that we have already established:

1. Preparing ready-to-eat meals for 150+ community members at Ali Forney Center twice a week.
2. Preparing ready-to-eat meals with ingredients donated from existing FIG network partners for 50+ members of Partnership with Children.
3. Twice-a-week no-contact home deliveries of prepared meals and groceries in partnership with the Street Vendor Project, to 50+ households across four boroughs.
4. No-contact home deliveries to 50+ individuals — friends, family, and co-workers — affected by job loss in the hospitality industry.

We are ready to expand these efforts to reach more communities and individuals! And we need more resources to do so.

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, FIG functioned as a nascent infrastructure of a decolonized, community-controlled, regenerative, and resilient food system. As a network of culinary professionals with deep and varied experience throughout the industry, we worked together outside of the conventional containers for food service. 

In this current climate of systemic fractures and urgent need, FIG is uniquely positioned to support and guide cooperative efforts for worker support, food sourcing, production, and distribution. 

FIG has identified two immediately critical areas of work: 1) creating more humanity and transparency in our food system, and 2) working with and for previously underserved individuals and communities. 

FIG aims to reorganize the food system as it recovers with our vision of a more humane and transparent food industry. This vision guides the way FIG is managing the responses and changes of our businesses and organizations in the present moment — so that justice, solidarity, cooperation, and sustainability are baked into the recipe of relief work. Of equal importance, FIG is committed to leveraging our relationships and knowledge to prioritize those who are experiencing harms from structural oppression, lack of media exposure, economic insecurity, digital access, and language access.