Pay It Forward

Here is another exciting story that also appeared in the Virginia -Pilot under their Pay It Forward snippets. It was more abbreviated then, so here is the full story:

That first year I only invited restaurants in the downtown area to participate. Once the field of participants had been narrowed down to 14, I made an attempt to pick up all the donations on the same day, basically scheduling a stop every fifteen minutes. One of my first stops was at Outback Steakhouse.

That year Outback had a fairly large box, all the donations in the same box. There was no way I was going to be able to carry it by myself out to the truck or to lift it into the bed, so the dishwasher offered to help. Now I have no idea the circumstances that led this gentleman down the road to this particular job at his age. And I have no idea why someone of his age would have to ask permission from the very young kitchen manager to leave the area for only a few moments to load a box into my truck. We have our different paths to walk, and often in F & B, those paths seem altered by hard lives and strange choices.

We carried the box and loaded it in the back of the truck, and then the man asked if I could wait a few minutes. He said he had not contributed anything yet and wanted to run into the nearby Dollar Store to buy a few things for the drive. So I waited... and waited... and waited... and waited. The day had just started and I was already behind schedule! The stress was about to give me a stroke! I started to think maybe he had gone out another door.

So I went inside to look for him. There he was, standing at the register with bags and bags of food. $50.oo worth of food! I asked him what he was doing; why so much food? And he told me his family had been on welfare most of the past year, that they had depended on their local food pantry to feed the kids, and now that he had a steady paycheck, it was time to give back.

Now I don't know how this man got into this position, but I do know for that Christmas season, he was my angel. He was the one who made it worthwhile, and he was the one who I thought about the next year when deciding whether to try it all again.

The Stash is in the Trunk!

This story was so touching, I sent it in to the Virginia-Pilot and it was published in January of this year under the title Secret Santas.

As stated before, there are many reasons a restaurant might not want to participate in this charity. Hooters for instance, already participates in four different drives, including Toys For Tots. Those girls have some big hearts under their big, um...well, hooters.

One restaurant in the Ghent area had been adamant about not participating, but some of the employees still wanted to donate. So they collected the cans in the parking lot, before and after their shifts! In the trunk of a car! Sneaky, secret Santas indeed!

New Directions

While I hope many, many people might read this blog as I near the kick-off date, I am fairly sure there is currently only one or two people reading right now, and for that I am thankful.
I wanted my blog to contain all the ups and downs of this experience. But I don't need it to be a balance sheet of negative responses borrowed from previous years.

Recently, I ranted against a few places who refused to give me incentive prizes. And then in a fit of total stupidity, I recanted my anger while spewing a new anger all over again. I do believe my anger was justified, but naming names and pointing fingers was probably not the way to get more businesses to participate in the future. I have deleted those posts.

I bet each reader would rather hear of brave tales of assistance rather than a listing of places who reneged on their promises.

I am going to change the direction of this blog to a more positive state. In the next few weeks, I want to tell you about those people who surprised me, those businesses who changed the shape of the food drive, and the LARGE cash donation of Byrd and Baldwin Brothers Steakhouse, and why it made me so happy (and why it has been secret until now).

Where Art Thou, My Can?

So where did they go?

I am asking, of course, about the 45 cans of green beans that I gave out to restaurants and then never heard anything at all. What did these places do with their cans? Did the green beans become some sort of garnish for foie gras? Were they mixed into the center of a crazy quesadilla?

I guess in my heart I hope somebody took the can home, heated the beans over the stove and then ate them. Maybe the can sat in the front of his car as he ran into the supermarket to buy a couple of steaks and a few potatoes for baking. He may not have noticed the lettering on the surrounding tag that screamed GREEN BEAN CHALLENGE 2008. Maybe the can rushed onto the floorboard when he stopped at a redlight, the nice steaks in their plastic bag jumping off the seat to cover his rolling shame.

Whatever may have happened to those cans, it truly pains me to know the truth: each one was thrown away into the trash can. It is highly unlikely that anyone would have taken their solitary "seed" can and donated it at a local collection center. And that whole truth is painful. Yes, they were not a meal, only a side item. Yes, the cans represent an ideal, not a commitment. And yes, the restaurants that responded brought so much more than the ones who threw the cans away. But DAG-NAB-IT!, those cans were food. Food. FOOD. F-O-O-D! I bet somebody could have made those beans into a casserole that was more than a side item, who could have made those beans into a heartfelt meal of appreciation and thanks, who could have made those beans into a realization that the world is cold and hard -- and also sometimes warm to those less fortunate.

It's impossible, but I might go back and ask for my beans this year...

Why green beans?

Some people ask me why I chose green beans as my challenge name. It's simple, the pea challenge already had its own double-entendre! And who would donate to the Creamed Corn Challenge?

Seriously, I asked a friend if he would donate to my food drive. He said he would rummage through his cabinets to find a can of beets he bought on a whim and then realized he would never eat beets. I was a little irritated and I told him, "People in economic trouble don't want to eat beets, either. They want to eat good food just like you and me. Go home and bring me something edible, like a can of green beans!"

And that is how it happened...

(Now just in case you are the Director of the American Beet Growers Association, I want you to be completely honest with yourself. While there are many, many people who love a delicious beet, in the hierarchy of canned vegetable popularity, beets are far lower than green beans.)

What's up with the Green Beans?

In mid-November of this year, 70-90 restaurants in the Norfolk area will receive a can of green beans with a tag encouraging them to return the can along with other non-perishable food items. Those who return a minimum amount (TBD) will be eligible to receive prizes including free hotel room stays, tickets to sporting and theater events, and admission to museums.

And it all started like this:
In late 2006, I had a small bag of 6-7 cans sitting by my front door, waiting to be taken to the Marriott and placed in a box by the time clock. (The Care Committee for the hotel was having a food drive.) For some reason I had an episode of Oprah on the TiVo -- I can only assume I thought I had taped the "Favorite Things" special, an exciting event on Oprah. Not that I don't like Oprah, I just don't normally have her show on the TiVo, and so it stands out in my memory that I did on that day. However, the episode was one in which she gave viewers $1,000 and told them to give it away to other people in creative ways. And WOW! The stories they told were incredible and uplifting. All the different ways they came up with to make the thousand dollars grow to even more money were just amazing.

I looked again at my little bag of food. Only an hour before I had complimented myself on what a LARGE bag it was, but now it just looked ordinary. My mind started to think of some way to make my donation larger. How could I possibly do that? I'm not as smart as those people on Oprah and I have no connections. Hmm, maybe I should ask my neighbors to donate. Yes, that should do it.

That night the Marriott was very boring. I found myself staring out the window of my office on the 24th floor, looking out over the city. My mind was wandering, trying to grasp how I could make my little donation turn into a BIG donation. And to be honest, the thought went through my mind, "All you have ever done is wait tables. You have no talent to offer, nothing to bring to the table, nothing except water with lemon and a fresh towelette."

Somewhere in that murky self-depreciation, the idea hit me: I have fed people all my life, why can't I use that talent to feed the less fortunate? After all, in my new position, I know dozens of people in the F&B industry; in fact, I know more of those people than I know the neighbors on my street. And thus a food drive was born!

That first year I contacted 40 restaurants in the downtown area. The drive was called the "Downtown Restaurant Food and Beverage Employee Canned Food Drive". Try saying that ten times fast... At the end of it all, 14 eateries participated, and we raised about 400 lbs. of food.

In 2007 I decided to do it again, but since there was only a 30% participation rate the previous year, I went further out and delivered more than 90 invitations all over the great city of Norfolk. After all , I figured 90 restaurants would equal at least 30 participating if the ratios held true. This year the snappy name became "Norfolk Restaurant Food and Beverage Employee Canned Food Drive." Really, the new name was so uninspired!

And for all that work, and all those invitations I had 14 participating restaurants again. On the bright side, we doubled the donation for that year.

There was even more to learn in 2007 as I decided to supplement my food and cash totals by hosting a party in my backyard, early enough in the season so the temperatures would be warm. In early October I invited around 50 people to a pre-drive collection party, complete with lots of music and alcohol. My friend Reed suggested that I implement a cover charge of cash or specific amount of canned food, but I completely rebuked that idea.

Now I happen to have the best friends in the world, so it still stings that this party was such a failure. Of the 50 people who came, only 8 offered cash ranging from $5 to $50. And as for the food donations, well those were pathetic. Some things I heard were, "Here are four cans, one for each of my friends who came with me." I guess it was the distance from the actual start of the food drive, maybe it was the warm autumn temperatures, maybe it was just human nature. But I did learn the words "minimum donation" and I keep those words close to my heart.





So why such an attrition rate? Why out of 90 invitations, did only 14 decide to help? There was a lot to think of as I moved into 2008.

If you have ever dealt with a restaurant manager, you know his word is only good until the moment he walks out the door. Then its the next manager's decision. Contracts, promises, phone calls, station charts and all sorts of other information are lost at every switch-over, and my invitations were definitely getting lost in the shuffle. I needed something that would stand out. Something bigger than an envelope. Something like a can of food!

A can of beans sitting on a desk is hard to lose in the paperwork. One manager asks another, employees ask the manager, and people's short term memories are refreshed with this silly reminder. The can becomes the seed, it represents the dollar in the tip-jar before the shift begins. And of course, I added prizes. Dog-gone it, if these people won't give freely of themselves, I'll bribe them!

In 2008, cans of green beans were delivered to 70 eateries along with the challenge to return the can along with other non-perishable food items. I believe I started with almost 45 "bites", although in the end, the number dropped to 25 places that actually participated. Maybe because the minimum donation requirement for the prize drawings, but the best part was the amount of food donated, especially in a recession year: 2,100 pounds- over a ton! Whoo-hoo, the newly named and more approachable "Green Bean Challenge" was a success!

And so here we are, mid-way through 2009 and this year I am moving full steam ahead by adding this blog and a few print ads. What numbers will this year bring? Stay tuned!

The Green Bean Challenge Starts Here!

This blog starts, as it should, with a can of green beans. The date today is July 9th, 2009 and it is 2:33 on a beautiful summer day, temperatures hanging in the mid-80s. I've just had lunch with my good friend Ann, and in the spirit of irony, I powerwalked afterward, trying to burn a few of the calories I had just consumed. It's beautiful to be able to eat in the USA. We can get fat and complain about being fat, and exercise at one end while we shovel it in the other, and hunger is...well, someone else's problem -- certainly not mine.

It will be interesting to see how this blog develops. There are alot of additions to be spliced and hacked onto this page. Links and hints and thoughtful musings paired against rants and disappointments.

But one thing I hope, pray, desire, lust and yes, hunger for, is that the one can above will multiply into hundreds of other non-perishable food items, pounds and pounds of food, hopefully even more than a ton of food, which can be delivered to the Foodbank sometime near Christmas of this year. For a while now, other people's hunger will be my problem.