Family Restaurant Expands Food Delivery Service Beyond Hospitals to ‘Fill In All The Gaps’ For Other Hungry New Yorkers

By Lisa Kava

Feed the Frontlines NYC, an organization established by Upper West Side restaurant owner Luca Di Pietro and his family to provide free meals to ER and ICU workers, has expanded to serve shelters and supportive housing residences. Di Pietro, a long-time Upper West Side resident, owns Tarallucci e Vino on Columbus Avenue at 83rd Street as well as 4 other locations.

What began as an attempt to save the family restaurant business while feeding frontline heroes has grown into a collaboration of 16 restaurant partners throughout NYC. Relying on private donations, the group of restaurants has collectively delivered over 114,000 meals to 53 healthcare facilities throughout the city.

The success of Feed the Frontlines NYC has enabled Di Pietro to re-hire much of the staff he was forced to let go after the shutdown in March. Re-hired staff members are busy cooking, packaging and delivering meals. Di Pietro has also been able to bring back workers as catering managers and front of house personnel. Other participating restaurants, which include Upper West Side restaurants North Miznon, Arba Modern Bread and Bagel, LoLo’s Seafood Shack and Chocolat, have been able to hire back almost 100 workers among them.

While the Di Pietro family founded Feed the Frontlines NYC in March with the intent of helping feed busy hospital workers, the Di Pietros realized there were others whose need for food had greatly escalated in recent months too.

“We really began to learn about the incredible food insecurity everywhere as a result of the virus,” said Isabella Di Pietro, Luca’s daughter, who is currently on a leave of absence from her studies at Harvard in order to help run Feed the Frontlines NYC. She has been a crucial part of the initiative since its inception. “The Di Pietros learned that many programs that previously supplied food to shelters and supportive housing residences no longer exist. “We were seeing people lined up around the block on West 86th Street at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger,” Isabella Di Pietro said. The Di Pietros decided to switch gears and focus on feeding those who are currently most in need of food.

So far, Feed the Frontlines NYC has delivered meals to 18 shelters and supportive housing residences. These include those run by the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, which primarily serves low-income people and the elderly, West Side Campaign Against Hunger, Jericho Project, Covenant House and New Alternatives.

According to Isabella Di Pietro, many who have been able to find housing through these organizations are living in small spaces with shared kitchens and a scarce food supply. “We are learning how widespread the need is. It was a need that was there before the crisis and has intensified.” The number of people in NYC experiencing food insecurity has climbed to 2 million; a significant increase from 1.2 million prior to Covid-19, Isabella told West Side Rag. Mayor de Blasio reported the statistics here and here.

“Looking at these numbers we took the model that we built from feeding the hospital workers to feed those who aren’t able to feed themselves.”

The Di Pietros recently started a pilot program with Volunteers of America (VOA), which operates housing units for homeless and those who have suffered domestic abuse. But VOA does not provide food. So the Di Pietros teamed up with the River Fund, a large distributor of free food in NYC along with 15 other NYC restaurants. As part of this program, 999 hot meals per day are being delivered to nine shelters run by VOA. A grant from the PepsiCo Foundation has been instrumental to the pilot program.

While the Di Pietros are thankful for an additional grant from the Paul E. Singer Foundation, which has helped support their work, they are hoping for public funding from the city in order to continue feeding those in shelters. “We are not being paid by the city at all, and that needs to change in order for this to be sustainable” said Isabella.

“We truly believe the model works. We talk to restaurants and donors every day. We are working around the clock trying to fill in all the gaps.” In fact, the Di Pietros say they have not taken a day off since personally delivering their first meal to a hospital ER on March 19th.

To learn more and to help purchase meals for those in need go to feedthefrontlinesnyc.org, @feedthefrontlines on Instagram or @feedthefrontnyc on twitter.