Notes From The City: An Abundant Life

The Love & Plenty project was developed during this past year, starting last March when the restaurants were first shut down. As I wrote last spring in my first post about the project, because of my background teaching nutrition and health workshops in Manhattan and working in low income and food insecure neighborhoods for years, when the restaurants were shut down I knew that we were facing an immediate and long term disaster in the food supply chain and the economy. At the time I couldn't believe that I was the only one who was seeing this, but then I began to realize that unless you've worked as a frontline worker specifically in the areas that I have, there was no way that you could know that on a good day in Manhattan and the boroughs there is not enough healthy food available for people in need. I've worked in soup kitchens and food pantries, shelters, recovery programs, senior citizen centers, schools, after schools and harm reduction centers. I've stood in parking lots in the Bronx during health fairs and in Harlem on 125th Street outside of social services centers handing out information about food stamps and WIC and where to go to find meals and clothing and housing support all while doing hands on education about eating more fruits and vegetables and lowering your sugar and sodium intake. The one constant in every place where I've worked and shared information is that people need healthy food and though there is plenty to go around, somehow it doesn't get distributed equally and the lower the income of the community and the more in need, the less healthy food there is readily available. So when the restaurants shut down, I knew immediately that not only would so many people be suddenly put out of work, but that those people, their families, and the people who the restaurants donated food to would not have a food source they had been relying on. And I also knew that the restaurants not only employed their staff, but they provided business revenue in a direct line to the farmers, purveyors and restaurant suppliers that would abruptly stop and leave food available with no market for it. Because of what I knew and had experienced over the years, I started to think about what I could possibly do to help mitigate the looming disaster, and I began to develop what was soon called Love & Plenty.

You can read about the project's early stages in my post of May 24, 2020, and now that it has been nearly a year I thought it was time to give an update because so much that's so good has happened. In the early months I was focusing on sharing resources with restaurants and meal programs to help connect them with food sources and funding, grants, and other programs that could help their businesses stay afloat and put food on people's tables. I reached out to contacts I've had for years in community and faith based organizations that worked in the inner city and in the areas of food and nutrition, and sent information to government organizations and grass roots newletters to raise awareness and ask for guidance. The basic premise of Love & Plenty was to help restaurants get funding to provide meals for people in need, and because I have also worked with Artists for many years, I connected them into the process with the idea that with any work sold, instead of a percentage or fee going to me, it would go to the project to help the restaurants. In the early stages I though that Love & Plenty would need to become a not for profit organization and I contacted people about possible fiscal sponsorship in the process and spoke with business advisors and consultants who I was connected to in the not for profit and business management fields. Then, in a memorable conversation last June, an Artist friend who is also a lawyer with many years of experience in the business world suggested that the business could remain for profit. With that idea, I realized that Love & Plenty could just be a consultancy of my own that I did pro-bono and that I could help a for profit restaurant build a sustainable charitable arm through their regular revenue and create a business model that could be replicated with some variations in any location. At that point I understood that Love & Plenty was simply the crisis mode of a long term project I have been planning since July of 2008 and had started to move forward on in 2018, to purchase a house in Little Compton, Rhode Island that would become a farm to table Chef's table restaurant that would be a training center for youth and adults from challenging backgrounds to learn about the hospitality industry, food and nutrition, farming, agriculture, ecology and sustainability, and that would also be a retreat and residency program for Artists. The restaurant would fund the charitable work, so that there could be free programs and a sliding scale for trainings and residencies.

Last September, when Antique Bar & Bakery reopened, we began to plan monthly wine pairings under the umbrella of Love & Plenty to help the restaurant with added revenue and marketing. Over time, Sommelier and Artist Joel Liscio who selects wine for the pairings has been bringing in ideas that could help the restaurant increase income from wine sales and a targeted wine program. The first of those ideas that was implemented at the beginning of this year was for the sale of Rife wine which has Joel's art on the label. I chose that restaurant because from the beginning of my vision for Love & Plenty, the food available there has been the inspiration. It is my core belief that everyone deserves to have food of that quality and creativity and flavor because it is lifechanging. If we can feed people with the best food, we can begin to help empower them to change their lives for the better.

In recent months Artists have begun to donate work for the pairings and to bring their artwork to be sold with a portion of the proceeds being donated back to the restaurant for the Love & Plenty project. The pairings themselves are exquisite and special afternoons, with special lunch menus that are paired perfectly with the wines selected by Joel Liscio. The tables are seated with food and wine and art lovers, entrepreneurs, Artists, and philanthropists, and there's a spirit of fun and celebration as well as an understanding that we are coming together as a community to help the community. Love and Plenty started as an idea and it has grown organically. When the name came to me, I thought of four additional subtitles, "Love Created, Love Delivered, Love Shared, Love Multiplied", a chain to fill the gap that had been broken when the restaurants were abruptly shut down, and over this past year I've seen the truth of those words come to life.

Love & Plenty

Wine Pairing Lunch

At Antique Bar & Bakery