Maritime journalist and cookbook author Troy Gilbert first conceived of the idea to pay chefs to prepare meals for first responders during times of hardship in 2005, in the aftermath of Katrina. This was before the days of crowdsourcing platforms like GoFundMe, though, and local restaurants’ own hardships at the time made it difficult to realize the idea. Fifteen years later, though, when Covid-19 struck, he was finally able to put his concept into action: the resulting nonprofit, Chefs Brigade, raised $80,000, which allowed forty restaurants to feed first responders for forty-two days between mid-March and May 2020.
In June of that year, the city of New Orleans and FEMA requested proposals for a meal program that utilized independent restaurants. “Long story short, we obviously won that contract,” Gilbert said. The contract was supposed to last for one month—in that time, Chefs Brigade built a massive coalition of New Orleans restaurants and culinary institutions, including NOCHI (the New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute), a local Waitr-style app called D'livery NOLA, and a company called Revolution Foods who agreed to finance the program.
Chefs Brigade’s FEMA meal program, originally supposed to last for one month, continued to feed individuals quarantined at home for an entire year. By its end in June of 2021, the program had given out 3.7 million meals, and Chefs Brigade had built up a massive network of chefs and restaurants as partners. “I had this big, well-established nonprofit that had accomplished incredible things already,” Gilbert said. “And so, I was sitting there like, ‘Well, what is our pivot? Moving past coronavirus, where does Chefs Brigade go next?’”
