From Hurricane Katrina to 30 Million Meals: How Mercy Chefs Scaled Compassion Globally To Give Back

What if a hot, chef-prepared, thoughtful meal could change the course of a disasterous day in your life? That is the calling that changed how victims and first responders of the world's worst events received meals in the middle of disater zones.

Local Chef Gary LeBlanc of Portsmouth, VA joins us to share how Mercy Chefs went from a garage operation fueled by personal credit cards to a global relief network serving more than 30 million chef-prepared meals, without compromising quality or humanity. We talk about the moment Katrina exposed the problem with “keep-them-alive” food, and how a tilt skillet, smart logistics, and a relentless standard turned empty parking lots into working kitchens within hours.

Gary opens the playbook: arrive fast, cook at scale, and always plate with dignity, recognizable protein, starch, veg, and fresh-baked bread or dessert. We dig into the early skepticism from legacy groups, the proof that followed, his wife's incredible support, and the mental-health guardrails that help teams serve through the hardest days, including the shift from search and rescue to recovery. From Asheville’s long tail of need, where a black bear literally followed the bakery smells, to building out permanent community kitchens and maintaining a 12-hour deployment goal, the story is equal parts operational grit and human warmth.

We also explore the Family Grocery Box program (70 servings, recipes, spices, QR codes) designed to refill empty pantries when survivors return home, and the global training model spreading in Honduras, El Salvador, and Argentina. Politics never enters the serving line; one question guides everything: Are you hungry? If this conversation moves you, come closer. Volunteer, donate, or share the episode to help more people find it. Then tell us: what would you cook first when hope needs a plate? 

Please support Mercy Chefs here: https://mercychefs.com/ 

and on IG here: https://www.instagram.com/mercychefs/

Thank you Chef Gary for being a shining example of love and compassion and using your culinary talents to massive scale and for your faith and stedfast leadership with your wife to keep this mission going!

Welcome to the show! Burnt Hands Perspective

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting the Table: Disaster and Food
• 2:39 Birth of Mercy Chefs after Katrina
• 6:14 From Empty Lot to 20,000 Meals
• 10:14 Who They Feed and Why It Matters
• 13:24 Funding, Growth, and Proving the Model
• 17:39 The Human Toll and Team Wellbeing
• 20:54 Global Expansion and Training Standards
• 24:54 Operations in the Field: Gear, Pastry, and Bears
• 28:34 Staying After the Cameras Leave
• 31:24 Family Grocery Boxes and Long-Term Aid
• 34:54 Mission Over Politics: Are You Hungry?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:24

All right, so Burham's perspective today is on a is on another level. We have a we have an amazing guest. We have some great stuff to talk about.

SPEAKER_01: 0:31

We're very excited.

SPEAKER_02: 0:32

Stuff I've seen all my life, kind of well, not all my life, obviously it hasn't been around all my life, but um I have seen it, you know, starting probably Katrina-ish times, um, because I'm a chef. Because I'm in the industry, I always wonder about that. I always wonder about when there's a big disaster, right? I always wonder about not so much this may be my youth speaking back then. I wasn't really so much worried about humanity because I don't think I was old enough to understand it. What I was wondering is though, what happens to all these people that are working and they don't have jobs anymore? Or what's gonna happen to that restaurant and this, that, and the other. Yeah. So it all kind of works out. And then I worry about, I never thought about feeding all the people outside of the restaurant. I always concerned myself with the restaurant. It wasn't until I got older and stuff that I started realizing holy shit, this is a disaster. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So so there's a lot of um there's a lot of mystique around that. So I would notice, you would notice uh who who first, uh the um what on the scenes? On the scene, yeah. So mercy chefs came around and I've noticed them before.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29

You saw this before, but you didn't really, yeah. We kind of filled you in on on what they do.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34

Right. Well, what I'm saying, what I'm getting back at is you see back in the day on TV when they're running the B-roll of the disaster itself, you see the help. You would see the thing. You see the tragedy, you see the devastation, right? And then you would see somebody feeding all these people. That is when I started realizing, wow, how do you feed all these people now that the restaurants are gone? And how do you feed these people now that the there's no grocery stores? What the hell's going on? People are starving now. You didn't think about that, right? Right until I got older, and then I started noticing as a chef, how do you feed my dining room, let alone a city? You know, a town, a country. So you would see all these help. Uh and I'm I'm having a brain fart now coming up with these names, but Mercy Chefs was always one of them.

unknown: 2:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:15

And here you are now, not realizing they're headquartered right here.

SPEAKER_01: 2:18

Yeah, I don't think a lot of people realize, so, chef Gary LeBlanc, we want to thank you for being with us because this is amazing. Um, Mercy Chefs is known throughout the entire world. So, I mean, but most people in the 757 don't realize that you are here home-based in a little area of Portsmouth.

SPEAKER_00: 2:36

From coastal Virginia to the world, it seems like that's that's been the trend for us. And, you know, you talked about what happens after a disaster. You know, that was the birth of Mercy Chefs. Um, New Orleans was my hometown. It's it's where I grew up in the business, it's it's where all my culinary roots are. And to watch the city. So you have that New Orleans cooking tradition style. I'm I'm well storied in that. Um, but to watch Katrina is when I went down and and volunteered for the very first time, not knowing any of those things. And then being so dissatisfied with the quality of food that I saw being served. You know, it's one thing to keep somebody alive in the aftermath of a disaster. So you're talking about a biscuit, maybe uh an apple. You know, we we we saw it 14 nights in a row, you know, a group scoop green beans out of a can on a plate with a coal hot dog one night, with frozen chicken nuggets a night, and and a slice of white bread. And they were doing the best they could with what they had. Absolutely. They were doing all they knew how to do. But I knew as a chef, as somebody in the profession, that there is a better way to feed people. And I thought we could do that, and I thought we could do it at volume. And that's that's what we've been working through for 20 years now is how to do it better, how to do it for more, how to get there quicker, how to do it more often. And that's that's our chase. We're we're never quite satisfied.

SPEAKER_02: 3:59

Well, no, you're right. I mean, so you're learning, and and as you go, we're talking about let's let's give a little breakdown on how this works. So we we can sit there and talk about the food all we want, which we will. But let's let's talk about how, you know, when you're talking about cooking for we're just talking like it's normal. We're having a conversation about cooking. What we're not talking about is the amount of cooking. How many people actually are affected by a devastation or a disaster, right? Right. How many people are affected, and then how many people show up looking? How long do you are you there before the word gets out and more people start coming? How do you keep up with this? That's that's kind of what I want to know is how did it start from then to now?

SPEAKER_00: 4:35

Man, it it is it is like a nuclear explosion sometimes. You show up, you set up, and then it's Katie Bar the door. I mean, there's no ramp up, there's no on-ramp. You you go from it's an empty parking lot one day, the next day, you're doing 20,000 meals essentially off a garden hose and an extension cord, and you're doing beautiful meals. Everything is handcrafted, everything is chef prepared. We we put so much love in our food. So it's great food, but we can do it at volume as well. We want to get there quickly. You know, we know those first responders, the men and women that are doing law enforcement or search and rescue, um, they work so hard and they usually do it eating MREs or power bars. That's all they got. That's that's no way to that's the they're they're heroes. They are the heroes in disaster.

SPEAKER_02: 5:23

Is that your main goal is to feed those who are helping the needy or uh and I say needy meaning the the victims? Displaced. Are you are you right? Are you helping is your goal to help would did it start out, did Mercy Chefs start out helping the the displaced victims, or did it start out helping the uh responders?

SPEAKER_00: 5:40

Well, actually, we feed victims, volunteers, and and the first responders. It started out more with some of the volunteer crews. I mean, I was working a full-time job my first five years in Mercy Chefs. And so it was when I could get a weekend or paid time off and go and support those teams doing the rebuilding effort. And then we just got better, we got more involved. And so now it's a race to get there, take care of those first responders, start feeding the victims, and then stay, stay as long as we need to stay to feed those volunteers.

SPEAKER_02: 6:10

So that's a good point of view. That's a good point. You need to feed the first responders so they can respond. Yeah. They need to be strengthened, they need to have a good stomach full, they need to be able to be able to make decisions. You can't do that stuff when you're hungry or hangry or making decisions, you know, last-minute decisions when you're not feeling right either. Sometimes, all the time, really, some of us find only comfort in a good meal.

SPEAKER_00: 6:32

Well, we think so. Amazing things happen when you share a meal. We do it as friends, we do it as family. But when you do it with somebody on the worst day of their life, um, it's it's next level. I mean, it's next level.

SPEAKER_02: 6:43

Yeah, definitely. So how do you now you started out small, I imagine. You started, you said you had a you had a uh part, a full-time job, so you were going off on your own to do this. So basically, you would kind of almost in a in a sense, I'm looking at it almost like Batman. You're watching the radar, you're seeing where next devastation is gonna be, and you're gonna you're gonna be there to help. If you're doing it part-time, you have to almost find something to go do, I would imagine. Is that right? So with that comes funding and buying this stuff. At the beginning, how did you do this? How how did you come up with the food at the beginning?

SPEAKER_00: 7:16

The the very worst business model you could ever have. Um, in the first five or six years, I'd do a deployment on a personal credit cards, and then I'd get home and I'd raise enough money to pay my cards back down. Um, we we didn't have any credit, we didn't have any base. I mean, nobody's gonna be able to do that. So you're doing this completely on your own. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, first five years we were the major donors and and we just believed in it. I have a hard time asking somebody for money for an idea. Hey, can you know, but I don't have a hard time telling somebody, hey, this is what we just did, or this is what we're doing in the moment. Would you like to be part of that? So back your request off of uh horrible business model, though. It it will strengthen a marriage if the marriage survives. Sure. Um, so many times it was like, okay, we just I knew when it was time to come home. My credit cards were full. I just couldn't.

SPEAKER_01: 8:10

That was how you gauged how much you could do in the beginning.

SPEAKER_02: 8:12

Bad, bad business. You can't become a victim doing trying to do good work. Yeah. And and so your your wife and yourself are the founder and co-founder. Yeah. So you've been through this from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00: 8:22

Yeah. Together. Yeah, and and we've we've just seen it grow. The escalation of what we do and and how we've grown is phenomenal. 10 years to serve our first million meals. Took 10 years to serve a million meals. We served our next million meals in three years. Wow. And in the, let me do math real quick. In the seven years since then, we've served another 30 million meals. I mean, the power of agoliths.

SPEAKER_01: 8:50

Yeah, that that that yeah, like you said, explodes.

SPEAKER_00: 8:54

It it really is. I mean, nine years ago, it was me and a part-time admin working out of half my garage. Uh we've got 124 staff right now. We have 124 people.

SPEAKER_02: 9:05

It's just what it takes to get this done. Sure. And then you got, you know, now you have your outreach with donors, and I'm sure you have people now that believe in you and see what you've been doing, what you're capable of, so they have a lot more confidence in backing this, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00: 9:18

Yeah, we've seen that grow as well. But again, we had to prove it. There are people that didn't believe this was gonna work. When when I first had the vision for Mercy Chefs, when I first got called, I went back to all the other groups that work in the disaster relief space and said, Hey, I've got this business model. And they all said, You're a fool. You're you're you're on a fool's errand. This will never work. It's too expensive, it's gonna take special equipment, it's gonna take specialized chefs. Uh, and and some of them even said, you know, we raise plenty of money doing bad food. Why, why would we need to do good food? So it was a heart call right from the beginning. It it wasn't about making sense, it was about hearing a call and answering it with everything that I had. I mean, I had to, I just had to lay it all down.

SPEAKER_02: 10:07

And a slight bit of a little dash of I'll show you competition.

SPEAKER_00: 10:12

Um, I I would say not, but it's probably evident that you know it's nice to see something work that that you believed in that is a chef, too.

SPEAKER_01: 10:22

And you're like, I know it can be done.

SPEAKER_02: 10:25

There's no quest to make sure this gets done. If you think if you if you think it can be done, you should get it done, period. That's it. That sauce is never gonna hold.

SPEAKER_00: 10:32

And then it does, and you're kind of like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 10:35

Oh, yes, it will.

unknown: 10:36

Trust me.

SPEAKER_00: 10:37

Yeah, I feel very fortunate though. That's like, oh man, I I wasn't sure myself.

SPEAKER_02: 10:41

Yeah, that's not gonna rise. That dough's not gonna rise. So when you started out with this, we already know that it was from Katrina, got you going and amped up. I'm I do a lot of um uh food. I just started maybe 10 years ago with some of my brothers in the club I'm in. And we've gone from a small trailer to now seven to eight uh tractor trailers in one day of delivery that is substantial. It's I think it's the East Southern uh South Virginia, Eastern Virginia's food bank's biggest donations of the year. Uh, we have a huge, huge thing, and we're we're making millions of meals off of our donation. Right. So it started from something just an idea, yeah, just to do something and get and and and add a little bit of help to now it we're dependent on for it almost. You know what I mean? If we I feel personally that if we back out of that or slow it down, we're doing a disservice as much as we did a service.

SPEAKER_00: 11:36

You know, I always laugh like I I knew I knew tradesmen, plumbers or carpenters that were making a great living with one truck and a helper. And they said, Well, let me get another truck. And first thing they knew, they had 10 trucks and 35 people on staff, and they wake up one day and say, Wait a minute, I'm working twice as hard, making half the money. I'm gonna go back to one truck. I feel that way all the time. But I can't go back to one truck because it what we do is for people. Um, it's a service. I have to keep growing, I have to keep getting to more people. That's the one thing that drives me. Every time I feed somebody, every time I see three more people I can't get to. And I'm I gotta get to one more. Yeah, and then I gotta get to one more. And it's 30 million more later.

SPEAKER_02: 12:21

Yeah, it's just a drive, man. I can't, I can't go back to one truck. And and and the personal quest that you have is if you fail on that for yourself, not to anybody else, you feel like you're not providing what you're here to do. And and I feel the same way in a sense, when you know, you know, people obviously come in here, they're not in the situation of a tragedy. They're coming in here because they have they want to spend their money and enjoy themselves. But it's still my goal the same way is to make food that bridge is that is that bridge to success. And and I want to make sure they're happy. And though this dining room was full now, I want more people to come in here. Not for the money, for the food. Yes, the money is essential. We need it to continue to grow, we need it to build. You can't do nothing without it. So we need donations. You need donations, you need things like that to happen and come in. You need people to believe in you. But when that is there and that's in place, now it becomes all right, now we have everything in line. I want to see this line of people get bigger. I want to see more of kids eating. It must be tragic for you to see some of the situations that you see.

SPEAKER_00: 13:18

It's really hard sometimes. We we work very uh diligently internally. We practice a lot of self-help and uh well-being within the team. We have a staff psychologist that's available to anybody on the crew. But that was my next question. We see we see some ugly stuff. And more than what we see, we take on that emotion as we feed somebody, you know, because food is love. Yeah, and and we're pouring out on them with everything we have. When you're feeding search and rescue teams, you know the day it goes from search and rescue to search and recovery. Yeah, and you're in the middle of that, you're part of that emotion. And and we're very careful with our team to prov protect them from that. It it's difficult, um, but it drives us. It just it drives us even further. And now that we're global, the things that we're seeing internationally are are beyond um what what my American brain can always understand.

SPEAKER_01: 14:14

Yeah, I don't think a lot of people realize that too. But you guys do lean in. I guess let's talk about the scope of the size of your team now, because I mean you have what 20,000 volunteers.

SPEAKER_00: 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 14:24

I mean, that's that in itself. Look at you know, any large corporation and they, you know, managing 20,000 people and coordinating that. And how many trucks do you guys have now?

SPEAKER_00: 14:36

Uh we've got five kitchens with two more in the factory, and uh we have five community kitchens, full-time permanent sticks and bricks kitchens around the country. Uh and we keep our mobile kitchens dispersed um so we can react to any disaster as quickly as possible. Um, our our goal is under 12 hours to be at the heart of the disaster and to be able to start feeding.

SPEAKER_02: 15:00

So uh what what what do you consider if you have those teams around, what type of disaster do you can what do you consider a disaster to where you need to be there?

SPEAKER_00: 15:11

Yeah, it it it doesn't matter. I mean, if if your home got hit by a tornado and it was the only home that got hit, and that's a disaster in your life.

SPEAKER_02: 15:22

So you're going out to things of that caliber all the way up to a landslide that wiped out unfortunately a whole village or something.

SPEAKER_00: 15:28

Yeah, we we we have to pick and choose. Obviously, we can't go for one home, but but the the point of that is that that that it's important to meet people in their moment of need. A 30,000 foot view of a disaster doesn't count. Oh, it looks bad down there. That doesn't matter. You have to get down eye to eye with the people and say, you know, I'm here because you're important. Um, I'm I'm here because you deserve somebody to stand with you. And that's that's where we do our best work, is when we're eye to eye with someone.

SPEAKER_02: 15:57

Sure. And that's that's where it's most felt in the community anyway. And that's what that's real life, anyway. You can't do what you're doing and not be eye to eye. You can't send them down with a drone. You have to be there.

SPEAKER_00: 16:06

Yeah, I want to say too though, that that we feed um as many people as we can get to. And we don't ask questions about how big was it, or how worthy of it, or is this gonna get press, or not. The only question we've ever asked in 20 years is, are you hungry? We we don't we don't ask about their faith, we don't ask about their political background, we don't ask them about anything. The only question we ever ask is, Are you hungry? No. And and that's who we feed. That's it.

SPEAKER_02: 16:34

Yeah, everything else is irrelevant. It absolutely is. At that moment, everything else is irrelevant. I mean, when everybody's in the same uh in the same pickle, uh uh how you got there is irrelevant.

SPEAKER_00: 16:44

We fed in in some really um precarious political positions. You know, everything is is is so divided nowadays. And we've been in places that weren't really well received by folks, and they're like, why are you there? Why, you know, this or that. Look, look, look, what happens with these folks, what happens with the politics happens so far above my pay grade, right? All I care about is that person in this moment. What what then a politician or a government or a country does with them is really not my business. I can't affect that. I can affect them in that moment by by sharing a meal and reminding them how important they are. That's that's where I make a difference.

SPEAKER_02: 17:27

That mindset, believe it or not, will help you sleep really good at night, too. Not worrying about all that other stuff and just the meal. If the if worrying about the meal is what you're worried about, like I am, we don't have to. You're right. I mean, you just sleep better at night knowing that all you have to do is one thing.

SPEAKER_00: 17:41

Yeah, food is crazy, isn't it? I mean, you can pour all your love in it. It's such a vehicle for emotion and passion and care and comfort. I mean it it it is it's it's primal. Um, I I think it was the first act of civilization was sharing a meal one person with another. I I I really believe it goes all the way back. It has to be.

SPEAKER_02: 18:01

Yeah. It has to be. No one could no one could kill a buffalo alone back then. Yeah. You needed help and then who's gonna eat it all. You know, I think you're right. But if you go, if you go back to um what she was saying before about how you've grown and you're all over the place with these countries, in that, like anything, I would imagine there's some sort of subculture within the culture you created. Meaning, if you have this out in other countries, you're dealing with people who are helping you or working with you in other countries, right? Right. So almost like a food bank. The food bank started as one thing. In every city, pretty much, every big city has one. Uh, they have their own crew, their own unit, all underneath the same umbrella. However, they all have their own little subculture, right? Right. So you're gonna get to the point where if you haven't already, I'd imagine that that is going on and you kind of have to bring everyone together to stay focused on your mission. Is that a thing? Uh how does that how do you go about that?

SPEAKER_00: 18:52

Yeah, we do. I mean, internally, we're very focused on mission. We, we, we have we have all those little parts of our culture. But as we're out there, you know, it's not just food that we have to share, right? We have knowledge, skills, talents, abilities that we we need to share. So we do a lot of teaching, we do a lot of training. Uh, we we have a teaching kitchen and a training base in Comiagua, Honduras. And from there, we're already branching out. We just launched a mobile kitchen in El Salvador. We just built another kitchen in Argentina. So our team is able to go in with people in the community and say, let us model this for you. Let us show you how to do this. And then we come in and support them whenever they need us to, but then stay out of the way. If you can teach them how to feed their community, um, then then you've you've you've done a good thing. There's a lot more effect than that than me trying to stand in front of a stove uh in and the few places that I can go.

SPEAKER_02: 19:47

So the quality of food of what you're talking about, you're talking about the good meals, everything we've already said, right? My guess what I'm getting at is if you have a team in Honduras, for instance, or South America or something, that team is being ran by somebody down there, I would imagine, or you're counting on someone there to keep it up. So keeping up the standard of that quality of food, is that is that yes, we know we have to feed them. Everybody has to be fed, but there also has to be a standard met. Do you see yourself having complications with that? Keeping that standard of what you expect.

SPEAKER_00: 20:17

Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes. But if you find people that have a passion that's similar, um, and they just need a little jump start, they need, they need a six burner or um, they need groceries for the first six months, or they need somebody to remind them about the importance of sanitation and food safety. I mean, teaching time and temperature controls in Latin America is crazy. Um, I rem I remember being in Haiti um teaching the the ladies that we we left three kitchens in Haiti then, one of them still operates. But teaching those Haitian ladies that we trained to wash their hands with warm water, I mean, they live in heat. Heat is their whole life. You want me to put my hand in hot water? They were they they just could not conceive that. But but sharing the importance of that, um, that proper sanitation in the kitchen and modeling those things for them and and creating a passion in them.

SPEAKER_02: 21:07

I'm I'm a I'm a serve safe instructor and proctor for food handling management, all that stuff. And it's hard enough for us to train Americans here. I couldn't even imagine someone training someone, and it's not lesser of a person, it's just their culture.

SPEAKER_01: 21:21

But our culture is different.

SPEAKER_02: 21:22

So trying to teach somebody a whole different culture in order to get your mission complete is kind of where I'm at. So that's what I was saying. So it must be really hard, in a sense, to not only put out your great food, but the whole thing around it has to stay right so the subcultures don't start deteriorating your mission.

SPEAKER_00: 21:37

Well, you stop in, you do checkups, you know, and and and we we have a whole team that travels globally. Um we don't work with any of our partners globally, that we don't do a check-in multi times a year. Oh, um, we want to we want to see proof of performance. We want to see that they're still doing what they're saying that they're doing, and that we're not just a funding agency. Um, I I I you know what we do is too fun too, right? I I don't want to just fund somebody. I want to go and be a part of it. Like I want to touch it, see it, smell it. I want to stand there with them. You know, that's that's the jazz. Yeah, I don't want to give that up.

SPEAKER_02: 22:11

Right. And in all these places you go, the power's out. Uh the the the um all the things that you need are not available pretty much. So you you must be showing up in your sleeping in tents or in the back of the truck that you towed with or something like that, right? Your team must have some sort of facility. You got to facilitate quarters for them, and that's a whole nother spectrum, right?

SPEAKER_00: 22:32

Yeah, we just we just inaugurated our second bunk trailer um because I just couldn't have the team on the floor, you know. I mean, sure. My first couple nights out in the field, we're sleeping on the the floor of the mobile kitchen. I remember a picnic bench one time that I thought was pretty nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, 20 years have passed. I'm not, you know, the team is very kind to me now. They they make sure I'm taken care of, but they've had some rough, rough environments. I mean, really tough going in after a hurricane and going to the heart of the need.

SPEAKER_01: 23:00

You go right to the center.

SPEAKER_00: 23:02

Yeah, I mean, there's there's no place around us that's safe. Everything is down. You must have spent time in Asheville when that happened and things like that. You know, we're still in Asheville. Wow. Um, we are still in Asheville coming up on the one-year anniversary. Uh, we've served over 800,000 hot meals there, and we will have served a million meals, a million meals in western North Carolina since Helene. Wow. And it's just important to us. The need is still there. Yeah. So we have to still be there. I mean, the the donations and the funding have long since stopped. Sure. I can't leave. There are people there that still need our help. We've just made a commitment down in Ingram, Texas, and the aftermath of those horrible floods down there. We're gonna build a community kitchen in Ingram. We're gonna stay in that community for forever. We're gonna be a part of that community. You you you stay where there's a need, you invest in the people in the community. If it's important right after the storm when everyone's watching, it has to be important a year later when no one's watching.

SPEAKER_01: 24:04

And a lot of people forget because you know the next thing has come along, or you know, but you had to build out infrastructure to be able to do that, which is just insane. And there's not a disaster all the time, so it's not like you're you're going somewhere. So you guys have actually filled in by implementing other things. Now, you said there were kitchens, like you have permanent kitchens in cities, but you also do the food, the boxes. So, how how does that work with within the business?

SPEAKER_00: 24:29

Well, the family the family grocery boxes, we keep we keep improving those. It's a curated box of groceries. We've got it up to 70 servings in a box. Um, and and they're not uh surplus stuff that we get off a shelf or out of a warehouse. We go out and purchase everything in there. We put recipe cards, we have little spice packets we put in there. There are QR codes where they can find other recipes because it has to be the very best that we can possibly put out there. And our family grocery box program is growing incredibly. We've we've got to find a warehouse now. Um it's created.

SPEAKER_01: 25:06

How long has it been going on?

SPEAKER_00: 25:08

Uh we've been doing family grocery boxes for about a year and a half now.

SPEAKER_01: 25:11

And it's already grown.

SPEAKER_00: 25:12

Yeah, it was something that my wife came up with. All my good ideas were my wife's to begin with.

SPEAKER_01: 25:17

Good awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 25:18

Yeah, I I I stole them all, right? Um, but she was like, you know, we have to do something for people that are going back in their homes after a disaster. They've lost everything in the pantry, everything in the fridge has long since been thrown out. Man, to go home and recharge a pantry is five or six hundred bucks. We don't have salt. You know, who's who's been out of work for three or four weeks that was living paycheck to paycheck before that can go out and recharge a pantry? So it's important for us that what what is the need? How can we better serve? Uh and family grocery boxes came out of that. And now it's a whole program on its own. We're we're doing thousands of grocery boxes every month.

SPEAKER_01: 25:58

That's crazy. That's amazing. It is. And that is that primarily still local? Like, are you just doing that in Virginia? Are you taking these with you when you go to the house?

SPEAKER_00: 26:05

No, we just we're we're doing 200 a week down in Ingram now for the people that went through the floods that are getting back in their homes. Um, we're still doing almost 800 a month in western North Carolina um for folks that take back home. And then, you know, eastern Kentucky from the floods three years ago, we're still working there with the grocery boxes and then here locally as well. Um, it it if if there's a need and we can get to it and we have the ability, we'll take care of it.

unknown: 26:32

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02: 26:33

So your your your chef knowledge has brought you to some really good things. I saw some of the food you were plating. I did some research, of course, and a lot of the stuff that you guys are putting out on these essentially cardboard plates or whatever it is they're doing are coming out really, really nice. I mean, you're doing a lot of stuff. I would imagine when you're building these trucks out, you've got a lot of uh tilt skillets and cauldrons and and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 26:53

It's a tilt skillet, baby. Every time. Every time. I take everything out the kitchen, leave me with a tilt and we're gonna make a meal.

SPEAKER_02: 26:59

Correct. And you can make a damn good one because you can start with everything from your braising all the way up to your your slowing, your your jarring, you can brown your meats, you can do everything in that. It's the whole thing. You can definitely make a lot of meals in one tilt skillet.

SPEAKER_00: 27:11

I've I've I've baked biscuits in a tilt skillet because there was just nothing else to do what, you know? Yeah, I can imagine. But the meals are so important to us, and we want them to reflect our love and our passion for the people. So there's always a recognizable protein. There's always a starch, there's always a veg. We bake on site. I have two pastry chefs that travel with us, and we we do our desserts, we do our breads all on site. Not nothing, you know, it's love from the oven. I mean smelling that. Yeah. It gives hope. It does give hope. In Asheville, uh, we were working, and there was a black bear that found our dumpster, loved our dumpster, right? And so after three weeks, three and a half weeks, we moved to another location. Um, and when we moved to the other location, it was about eight or nine blocks away, right? Found it. Second day yeah, there's black bear is following us around. That's about I don't know if everybody else is loving us, but the wildlife is following. I'm gonna tell you.

SPEAKER_01: 28:05

He had a good hibernation then.

SPEAKER_02: 28:06

Yeah, he did. He did.

SPEAKER_01: 28:08

He was eating good the whole time.

SPEAKER_02: 28:09

I'll tell you what, you know, to to cook like that, firstly, we when you lose everything and you're losing everything. When a town gets shut down, you're losing everything. You're losing the smell of gas, you're losing the smell of car fumes, you're losing the smell of everything. Just a normal industry that was shut down. Yeah. So if you show up and you don't know what's going to happen next and you're hungry and you start smelling this food, you're gonna smell that tenfold. It's almost like driving down the road and by a Burger King in the winter when that cold and you all you smell is that Burger King. I know exactly what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. Great picture. Yeah, so so when you're smelling that and you're driving through it, you know. And if you're if you're baking bread on top of it, yeah, where's the disaster at this moment?

SPEAKER_01: 28:47

There are no disaster here.

SPEAKER_02: 28:49

Someone's getting you good tonight. I hope so. That's the way you the mentality you guys are what you're bringing to people. And that's amazing. It's amazing. I I love having conversations with chefs who have gone outside of the kitchen and still create such an impact on people's lives. Because, like you said, everything we do is based around the best celebration of us is around a table. Absolutely. And um, some people are in it to make money. Making money to me always comes if you just do it right in the first place. If your function or your or your mission is to bring people around the table and love what you do, don't worry about the money. That that's gonna come naturally. But don't do this just to make money.

SPEAKER_00: 29:24

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I I agree completely. We always say that um um money will follow ministry, but ministry should never follow money. And and so it's like in those first five years or so, I just did it. I just got out there and did the best I could with what I had. Yeah, and and kept doing it. And the resources followed, but I had to do the work first. I had to take that step of blind faith.

SPEAKER_01: 29:49

Yeah, but you had the faith and the tenacity to follow through with it.

SPEAKER_00: 29:53

I don't know that I really had the faith. Now it's easy to say, oh yeah, I had the faith. Back then I was terrified.

SPEAKER_01: 29:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 29:59

I was terrified. I was like, God, what do you want me to do? This doesn't make sense. I can't, I can't rationalize this. I've got to go tell my wife that you've called me to mission work. Come on, it's just not gonna fly, man. We both know we're using our own credit card. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I when when when and it was an audible call. I mean, I actually heard God speak out loud to me and tell me to go feed people. Just go feed people. In the aftermath of Katrina, that was the message I got. I sat down with a piece of paper and I wrote down eight names of people that I knew could do it better than me. I said, God, why are you talking to me? Here are eight other people. Do you need phone numbers, emails? How can I get you in touch with them? Like you can you got the wrong guy. I mean, you got the wrong guy. But kicking and screaming and fighting and trying to run from it, I couldn't. I couldn't. And and just to see that obedience, I didn't have to be smart. I didn't have to do anything but say yes. Yep. That's all I had to do was yes. And I did that reluctantly. Almost as easy as the question, are you hungry? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:04

Yeah. It's so simple, isn't it? It is. It is.

SPEAKER_01: 31:07

That is amazing.

SPEAKER_02: 31:08

People make it not simple. That's the thing. So that's right. You've took it and went with it and you let the simple do the work.

SPEAKER_01: 31:14

Well, and now have you seen the new Netflix, the documentary on Katrina that just came out? Have you seen that yet?

SPEAKER_00: 31:20

I can't watch it. Yeah, I was going to ask you to be able to. Okay. 20 years of Katrina anniversary. I've dealt with them all and recognized, and it's motivated me every time. Something about this year.

SPEAKER_01: 31:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:32

I couldn't watch. I I just I couldn't watch it this year. Um, so I probably will ease into it. Um, but it's gonna take a little bit of time. It was we were in New Orleans three weeks ago. Uh we we were looking at a place down there to do a community kitchen, a full-time thing. You know, it what a perfect circle for me to finally end up back down here. Um but yeah, I I maybe it's because I was just there, but I I just couldn't watch. It was such a powerful moment in my life. Um, images on TV, my town being torn up and the effect that that had on me, I I I still I I I I still have a hard time looking squarely at what really happened to my town. Yeah, yeah, it's devastating for sure.

SPEAKER_02: 32:16

That's a and that it sits on you. Yeah, it does. It sits on you. Has that has the town since grown back up or starting to come up?

SPEAKER_00: 32:23

You know, we go all the time to visit and and um it was starting to come back. Um you could you could feel it, you know, and then COVID hit. Man, it was that was that was like the blind punch coming out of left, man. You just didn't see it, you know, and it completely took the city down to nothing again, the hospitality industry, especially. And now we we we're we're just down if it feels alive again, it feels full again. But you have to recognize New Orleans still has 75% of the population that it had before Katrina. Twenty years later, the population hasn't grown back in in the city. I mean, tourism is back, restaurants are back. I mean, great things are happening down there on the food scene. The hotels are back, they've all been renovated and freshened. I mean, it's alive. It's alive, right? But there are still scars.

SPEAKER_02: 33:14

Sure.

unknown: 33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:15

Like, yeah, I can imagine so. Well, you did an amazing thing by setting up what you did, and if anything came of that, uh, one thing, you know, with scars come healing. And I think that you coming from that, if that's if you know, if anything good comes from that, I'm sure other things good came from it too. But Mercy Chefs uh essentially came from that, right? So something did come from it. Good, right? Because here you are now, and that and that paves the way because no matter what happens, the tra the devastation is the devastation. That's never gonna go away. But what came from it on the positive, here you are, now you're off doing it to other people and helping out there too. So yeah, yeah, kudos to that. An amazing, an amazing feat.

SPEAKER_01: 33:54

I love it. Well, I I just I love hearing it because again, I remember when I was back at the news station when they'd first brought you guys on, and this was back, I mean, 2008, 2009, somewhere around that area. Yeah, and I remembered seeing what you guys did and then seeing it go from that to now and being like, oh my gosh, they're in the middle of, I mean, national coverage news, seeing people that were like, that's our trip. They're from they're from our hometown. Like they actually came out of Virginia and you're everywhere. And to see that is an incredible thing. And I think just people being inspired and to not be afraid of going after things and and to help people. I just I'm I'm glad you came to share that because it's cool to see it just grow the way that it has because you guys do amazing work and it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00: 34:38

It's miraculous, and it's something well beyond me. So hope you get to come out and see us sometime. Chef, we need to we invite you in our kitchen. I would love to.

SPEAKER_02: 34:46

If you're ever free, I would have to have you with us. Catastrophe happened for that to happen. So let's not confuse this, right? All right, yeah. But they happen. Yeah, it's always gonna happen and it's never gonna stop. Yeah, yeah. So I would love to take you up on this as long as you're there with me. I'll be there. Yeah. All right. He's still there.

SPEAKER_01: 35:04

Well, I mean, we do get him a bed now, but he's still at the trailer.

SPEAKER_02: 35:07

I won't need a bed.

SPEAKER_00: 35:09

I won't make you sleep on the floor. I'll continue to work.

SPEAKER_01: 35:11

It's okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 35:12

I would love to take you up on that. I would love to be there. Um, matter of fact, we'll talk. I would really want to I really want to take you up on that. I would love to be a part of that. Yeah, and they're something I would love to experience. We'd be honored to have you in our kitchen. That'd be one. That'd be a good idea. Sure, I'd love to cook something for them. That'd be fun. That'd be amazing. So let's line that up. Like I said, unfortunately, for the reasons why aren't good. However, it's that's what you're here for, and that's what I want to go be part of. Yeah. I would love to help you out and be part of it and experience. That'd be amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 35:37

And how can everybody else still help? Because I'm, I mean, I know you you guys are, I mean, you are cranking. So what where can people go? How can they help you? What are all the ways that they could participate?

SPEAKER_00: 35:47

You know, the website is the best place. First thing I want people to pray for us, pray for the people that we're serving. That's the most important thing. But beyond that, on the website, you can volunteer. That's the links, that's how people get into our volunteer network. And there are secure links on there that people that that say, hey, I've got a little treasure. I'd like to invest that in something outside of my world. I'd like to be a part of that somehow. Not everybody can go and serve and cook like you, Chef, but everybody, everybody can pitch in a little bit. You need help on all fronts. That's what keeps us rolling.

SPEAKER_01: 36:20

Okay. So and the website, go ahead and mercychefs.com.

SPEAKER_00: 36:22

It's pretty easy to remember. Source of all information, mercychefs.com. Perfect.

SPEAKER_02: 36:26

And that'll link you to everything.

SPEAKER_00: 36:28

Everything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 36:29

Wonderful. Well, it's been an honor having you here. I know. It's and it's it's honorable what you do and what you've created and all your team and teams throughout the world. We appreciate you. And from a culinary standpoint, I find it fascinating because what you're doing is on a on that level of mask production in a good quality. I know what it takes, and I can't wait to be part of it. I would definitely want to come see it firsthand.

SPEAKER_00: 36:49

It is great to be with you guys today. Thank you so much for the hospital.

SPEAKER_01: 36:53

Cheers to the next 30 million meals.

SPEAKER_00: 36:55

Oh my gosh. I'm tired. I'm tired.

SPEAKER_01: 36:59

Maybe 10 million right now. We'll go for that.

SPEAKER_02: 37:01

Cool. Well, ciao for now. Thanks for coming. Glad to be with you.