- Title: Turkey sandwiches become California cafe's coronavirus lifeline
- Date: 1st July 2020
- Summary: OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (JULY 1, 2020) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF EMPLOYEES MAKING TURKEY SANDWICHES IN KITCHEN OF FARLEY'S EAST CHRIS HILLYARD, CO-OWNER OF FARLEY'S EAST, DURING INTERVIEW LOGO FOR FARLEY'S EAST ON T-SHIRT (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHRIS HILLYARD, CO-OWNER OF FARLEY'S EAST, SAYING: "So we've been open for a few months now and the cafe is about 30 percent
- Embargoed: 15th July 2020 21:39
- Keywords: Farley's Farley's East cafe Oakland cafe pandemic woes World Central Kitchen business cafe coronavirus health pandemic public health small business
- Location: OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
- City: OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Health/Medicine
- Reuters ID: LVA001CL494QV
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Each day, employees at Farley's East cafe in Oakland, California fix about 200 turkey, ham and eggsalad sandwich lunch plates that are distributed for free to the homeless, Covid-19 testing sites, school-age kids, and others in need.
It's a community lifeline as coronavirus cases and unemployment rise, leaving parents struggling to feed their families and the unsheltered facing even more uncertainty.
It's also a big reason the cafe, which more typically trades in $4.50 lattes and $12.95 whole health protein bowls, is still in business.
Downtown Oakland office buildings are still empty because many of the city's corporate workers are doing their jobs at home, and others have joined the surging ranks of the metro region's 323,000 unemployed. Since the eatery reopened in late April, sales to individual customers are about 30% of its pre-crisis norm, says co-owner Chris Hillyard.
The lunch order from World Central Kitchen (WCK), a Washington DC-based nonprofit that has organized community food giveaways with 2,000 restaurants nationally since the pandemic began, adds back another 30%.
"It's really a lifeline for our business," Hillyard says. The World Central Kitchen has spent $55 million on its program since it began in March. "We would be going into debt daily without the World Central Kitchen program to help support our business."
In Oakland, the WCK is ordering from 100 restaurants including Farley's, injecting $700,000 weekly into the local economy, according to WCK's CEO Nate Mook.
Funded in the San Francisco Bay area through donors like Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry and wife Ayesha, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the program is expected to expand further and continue through the summer.
Farley's East has had other help too: in April it received a $221,000 payroll protection loan, one of 4.7 million distributed in a $660 billion program created by Congress in late March. The money helps pay for the 16 employees Hillyard has rehired, as well as rent and some other overhead.
Recent changes to the terms of program, in response to public criticism for being too stringent, make it easier to convert the loan to a grant and give the cafe six months rather than eight weeks to spend the money.
California's reopening after the shutdowns imposed in March has meant a return of some economic activity. But like in many states it is also bringing with a rise in infections.
On Friday, Bay Area authorities halted plans to allow more economic activity after a surge in new cases.
For now, Hillyard says he's found a measure of stability,
Hillyard says the cafe is in a wait and see period. And a lot may depend on whether employees of healthcare corporation Kaiser Permanente and Xirius XM's Pandora return to their offices nearby.
"As a cafe, we're based on volume and there's just not the volume with all the empty office buildings and with the change with COVID, we don't know if they'll ever come back," Hillyard said.
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