Bar Louie, 234 Frederica St., is working to feed families in the Rolling Heights neighborhood off East 18th Street during the coronavirus pandemic.
They started the program on Wednesday, preparing 75 meals.
But that was gone in 15 minutes.
So, they quickly fixed another 75.
“It looks like 150 is the right number,” Alex Barton, general manager of the restaurant, said Thursday. “That’s what we’re fixing on Friday.”
Mike Baker, vice president of restaurant operations for River City Louie LLC, a Matt Hayden and Jack Wells enterprise, is a past president of Girls Inc. and a board member for 25 years.
“There is a real need for those girls,” he said. “So we’re providing 450 meals a week for them.”
The meals are delivered to Girls Inc. at noon on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Tish Correa-Osborne, executive director of Girls Inc., said Bar Louie “reached out to us to see what they could do to help families. And we had 88 shares on Facebook.”
She said, “We were doing it from 12 to 1 p.m. on Wednesday. But by 12:15, the first food was gone. And they started making more at Bar Louie.”
Correa-Osborne said, “The need is real. We had families coming in vans with six or seven family members. A lot of moms walked up with babies in strollers. The anxiety of it is getting to people.”
She said, “It’s designed for the Rolling Heights neighborhood and the Girls Inc. families. They drive around the circle in front of the building and we hand them the food. There’s no contact.”
On Friday afternoon, Correa-Osborne said, “We received 125 meals yesterday and still ran out. We received 150 today and have 19 left. But some people are coming later to pick them up.”
Barton said, “We did ham sandwiches on Wednesday and I’ll be grilling hamburgers on Friday. They get Cheez-its, fruit and a cookie with it.”
He said the project “turned out to be really good for us.”
Baker said Jack Wells and Matt Hayden have also been providing meals for their employees daily since March 16.
He said people who want to help Girls Inc. can send money to Girls Inc., Box 1626, Owensboro, KY 42302-1626.
Baker said Bar Louie is continuing to do curbside food service from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and still doing catering.
Keith Lawrence, Messenger-Inquirer