Despite tough times, these Miami-area businesses are sharing what they have

At Lil Greenhouse Grill in Overtown, free meals are provided to hungry neighborhood kids when they show up at the restaurant.

At the 11 South Florida locations of CAO Bakery & Cafe, another family-owned enterprise, each customer gets a free loaf of Cuban bread each Monday.

And Feeding South Florida, a nonprofit that distributes free food to hundreds of thousands of people, has benefited greatly from donations made by businesses large and small. The much-needed gifts come as donations to the food bank decline overall but as the need for food aid soars.

As the coronavirus pandemic rages, local and regional businesses of all sizes are pitching in to help support and nourish workers who’ve lost jobs — as well as their hungry families — and to show gratitude to first responders and healthcare workers.

“Not unlike more familiar crises like natural disasters, the pandemic has brought out the best in people — while putting a spotlight on what already was a struggling community, with 59 percent of its households living in, or on the edge of poverty, one unplanned event from financial hardship. COVID-19 was that unplanned event,” said Maria C. Alonso, president and CEO of United Way Miami-Dade.

“We know all too well that small businesses, which serve as the backbone of our economy, are facing challenges during this unprecedented time,” Alonso said. “Despite the hardships, these businesses are stepping up and giving back in a big way. We’ve witnessed many generous acts — from a local law firm providing free consultation on navigating the CARES Act, to a marketing company offering training on how to continue conducting business during this time, to restaurants donating food to struggling families.

“This is what being united in spirit is all about, bringing relief to Miami and enabling our community to come back stronger.”

Despite their difficulties, these businesses — small businesses in particular — are using their limited resources to help others.

‘WE WANTED TO DO SOMETHING’

Lil Greenhouse Grill, for instance, shares the struggles of many small businesses these days. It’s an attractively decorated, full-service restaurant serving “neo-soul cuisine, a healthy alternative to soul food without sacrificing flavor or culture,” said Nicole Gates, who co-owns the business with her executive chef, Karim Bryant. “Ribs with our Dreamfire sauce, shrimp and grits, collard greens and macaroni and cheese are some of our most popular dishes,” she said. Gates and Bryant opened Lil Greenhouse Grill in 2017 after running a food truck together. The restaurant can seat up to 40 people under normal conditions.

Until the pandemic struck, the restaurant was doing well, with gross revenues of $325,000 last year, Gates said. “The restaurant was poised to gross $500K this year.” The popular site got a big publicity boost when Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, co-host of “CBS This Morning,” visited in January.

When Miami-Dade County restricted public dining areas in mid-March, Lil Greenhouse Grill started offering takeout and delivery meals, as many other eateries in the county are doing. “I know exactly how much we’ve been impacted,” Gates said. “Our daily revenues are down 93 percent from last year.” Before the crisis, the restaurant had eight employees, in addition to the co-owners. Now there are two employees.

“We are currently making it by the grace and understanding of our landlords and the few creditors we have,” Gates said. She’s waiting to hear if the business will receive any of the government’s stimulus package that is earmarked to help small businesses.

Despite their difficulties, Lil Greenhouse Grill shares its limited resources to help others as much as it can.

Earlier this month, the restaurant provided a courtesy lunch to the entire staff of the Jackson Pediatric Center, part of Holtz Children’s Hospital at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center. Gates’ and Bryant’s son, Karter, was born prematurely and receives speech therapy at the center.

“We are not in a position to feed an entire front line, but we wanted to do something for people who mean so much to our family,” Gates said.

Also, the restaurant each day provides free meals to about 10 to 15 neighborhood kids whose families are struggling and are hungry.

“We know the children in Overtown who need a meal,” she said. “When the kids come by — usually in the early afternoon — they always get a meal.”

The business provided some meals to local children before the crisis, but the number has gone up in recent weeks. “It varies — it depends on how the kids’ moms are doing. Sometimes they have a good week, sometimes not. We always take care of them.”

LOAVES AND GOOD WISHES

Miami-based CAO Bakery & Cafe aims to feed the spirit as well as stomachs with its Cuban bread giveaways.

The bakery — named after its founder, Antonio Cao, who is a third-generation Cuban American baker — was founded in Miami in November 2018, and was built on the Vicky bakery chain started by the family in 1972. Business has fallen by 50-60 percent since the shutdown began, Yvette Cao, an owner of the bakery, said.

Customers stop by for treats and light lunches; the business offers the traditional sandwiches, croquetas and guava pastelitos, for instance, that you might expect to see in nearly any Cuban bakery in Miami. But every Monday, from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., CAO offers something extra: a free loaf of Cuban bread to customers — and to anyone who enters one of the chain’s 11 South Florida locations. That’s something the bakery has done since the shutdown started; the exact number of loaves given away is unknown.

“Cuban bread is a household staple to many, and ours is a family recipe,” Cao said. She spoke from CAO’s flagship store on Coral Way, which attracts the company’s strongest traffic.

While the giveaway is a small gesture, she said, “We wanted to give something from our kitchen to our customers, and to the community. People who come in don’t have to buy anything. It starts the week on a positive note.”

Feeding South Florida

Feeding South Florida, based in Pembroke Park, is the region’s largest food bank and works with community partners in Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe and Palm Beach counties. It distributed nearly 62 million pounds of food (51.5 million meals) during the last fiscal year to more than 706,400 individuals — 236,000 of whom are children and 100,000 older adults. But the need for food is soaring: Between March 9 and April 24, the charity had already distributed more than 18 million pounds of food.

Publix Super Markets is one of several food chains that donate surplus perishables to Feeding South Florida, and it has increased its purchases of milk and fresh produce from regional farmers as demand for those farmers’ goods has fallen in recent weeks. Besides Publix, others who contribute perishable foods to the charity include Target, Walmart, Winn-Dixie, Costco, BJ’s warehouse club chain, and Fresh Market.

Meanwhile, like other larger companies, the Lakeland-based grocery chain has also given indirect aid — cash donations — to the food bank. At Publix, that’s handled through Publix Super Markets Charities. The charity recently gave $275,000 to Feeding South Florida; the gift was part of the charity’s $2 million donation to Feeding America, which is the parent organization of Feeding South Florida and food banks in six other states where Publix operates.

“During these unprecedented times that have affected nearly every aspect of our day-to-day lives, many people may not know where their next meal is coming from,” Todd Jones, CEO of Publix, said in a statement when Publix Super Markets Charities donated its first $1 million to Feeding America in late March. “This donation will provide assistance to those impacted and help continue the work that Publix, Publix Charities and Feeding America do every day to alleviate hunger in the communities we serve.”

Other large companies that have contributed cash to Feeding South Florida include Conviva Care Solutions, a medical management services company based in Miami, $750,000; the Arison Foundation/Miami Heat, $200,000; Weston-based Ultimate Software, $125,000; the Miami Dolphins, $125,000; and the Ansin Foundation/WSVN, $100,000. Also, a few not based in South Florida but conducting extensive business here are: Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, $520,000; and Michigan-based Lineage Logistics, $200,00. Other enterprises have made in-kind, non-food gifts: Palm Beach Gardens-based TBC Corp., a major marketer of auto replacement tires, has donated a 25,000-square-foot warehouse in Pembroke Park for three months.

Individual businessmen have also donated substantial sums to the Feeding South Florida: Jeff Bezos, the South Florida-raised founder of Amazon, gave $802,000 and David Guetta, a French songwriter and record producer, has given $130,000. (Guetta was in the news last month when he live-streamed a two-hour concert to raise money for coronavirus relief efforts; the show was seen worldwide and had 6.2 million viewers on Facebook. But when more than 100 people amassed outside his downtown Miami condo to hear the echoes of the blasting electronic dance music, police swiftly broke up the party, the Miami Herald reported.)

Some smaller businesses are also supporting Feeding South Florida and other nonprofits whose mission is to help food-insecure individuals and families. One small firm that has contributed is GRYC (Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen), a Coral Gables-based law firm that focuses on medical malpractice and personal injury.

Neal Roth, a co-founder of the firm, said he was looking for a way to help ease the pandemic’s impact on the community. “I was really struck by how many people in South Florida have lost their jobs and are not getting unemployment benefits,” he said.

Roth saw that the food bank had received a four-star rating (the highest) from Charity Navigator, which evaluates charitable organizations on a variety of criteria. As Roth found, each $1 in donations provides seven meals, which means the $25,000 his firm has donated will buy 175,000 meals.

“Our firm, and its individual partners, have a tradition of giving back to our community,” Roth said. “Feeding South Florida helps people, which is the kind of work we do. It was a natural fit.”

=================

In South Florida, relief and donations come from a wide range from financial institutions, grocery stores, restaurants, fast-food outlets and other sources. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of local companies making a contribution; here are some examples of a few of them.

Restaurants and fast food

Burger King, headquartered in Miami-Dade, donated 1,000 burgers and fries to Big Brothers and Sisters of Miami, and is paying its corporate restaurant employees a bonus through the end of May. Burger King, a unit of Restaurant Brands International (RBI), also has raised more then $75,000 to help team members in South Florida and is partnering with Univision in May to give away 500 Burger King Family Bundle meals to people in Miami who have helped the community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Popeyes, another RBI business, donated 300 chicken sandwiches to workers at local Baptist Hospital centers.

Lenny’s Pizza in Miami Beach, which serves kosher pizza and a wide variety of other dishes, recently gave pizzas and other food items to the emergency room staff at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach and the ER staff at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood.

McDonald’s owners and operators in Miami are offering additional support. The Menendez family, multi-generational McDonald’s franchise owner/operators, delivered free meals to healthcare workers at Baptist Hospital, and is planning more food deliveries at other local hospitals. Yoyi Rodriquez, a second-generation owner/operator, has been arranging free, weekly “Care Packages” for employees and families at her eight McDonald’s locations in the Miami-Hialeah, Flagler and Miami Gardens areas. In addition to the weekly packages, employees receive free additional meals at the restaurants, food and hand soap to take home to their families.

Also: Nationwide, Chicago-based McDonald’s is offering free “Thank you meals” to healthcare workers and first responders at breakfast, lunch or dinner until May 5. Recipients need to show an ID.

Pollo Tropical, which is based in Miami, has donated more than 2,000 meals and free meal coupons to medical staff at South Florida hospitals. Since March 21, the company also has provided a 50 percent discount to doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers, as well as to all first responders and employees of UPS, the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx on pick-up and drive-through orders. Pollo Tropical has 76 locations in Miami-Dade and Broward, out of 140 participating locations in Florida.

Ruth’s Chris restaurants — whose corporate headquarters are in Winter Park — provided free meals to healthcare workers at Coral Gables Hospital and to other first responders and healthcare employees in South Florida. The restaurant also has provided Ruth’s Chris discount cards to these groups.

▪ Several other South Florida restaurants and fast-food outlets as well began offering discounts to healthcare workers and first responders earlier this year.

Presidente Supermarkets, Winn-Dixie and Walmart

Presidente Supermarkets delivered 140 meals to healthcare workers at nine UHealth Jackson Urgent Care Centers in Miami-Dade in April. Miami-based Presidente, which is family-owned, also partnered with United Way of Miami-Dade and former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas to distribute food to families of hospitality workers whose jobs were impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak in the Miami area, and to raise funds to help feed other struggling families. Presidente has 34 stores in Florida, of which 21 are in Miami-Dade. It is planning more food donations.

Southeastern Grocers (SEG), which owns Winn-Dixie, Fresco y Mas and other supermarkets, paid the grocery bills for thousands of first responders and healthcare workers who shopped at their stores on April 13 in Florida and six other states. In March, Jacksonville-based SEG donated $250,000 to Feeding America in the states where it operates. From the total donation, Feeding South Florida was able to supply more than 50,000 meals to local communities, SEG said.

The Walmart Foundation in March donated $10 million to nine organizations that support food banks, schools and senior meal programs. Feeding America, Catholic Charities and Meals on Wheels were three of the groups that received funds, but Walmart did not respond to a Herald request asking what share of its donations were applied to South Florida. Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart and the Walmart Foundation also announced a $25 million commitment to support organizations responding to COVID-19.

New partnership assists underprivileged families in Miami

DeliverLean, an Oakland Park-based company that produces and delivers healthy meals to clients, has developed a food distribution program and food drives that are directly assisting needy Miami families. Under one initiative, DeliverLean Cares, the company’s charitable arm, in March partnered with Alonzo Mourning, a former Miami Heat star, and with the Overtown Youth Center (OYC) founded by Mourning, to distribute more than 1,500 meals a week in Miami.

DeliverLean and OYC host distributions of nonperishable foods and ready-to-eat meals on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Gibson Park, the company said. Packages of food are given to people driving to the park in cars or on foot. The program aims at reaching underserved, inner-city families in Miami. Additional distribution points are planned.

“Since we started the partnership with Alonzo on March 25, we have distributed over 14,450 meals and 22,000 perishable items and will continue to do so until this pandemic is over,” said Scott Harris, DeliverLean’s founder and CEO on April 27.

The company provides aid in other areas. “DeliverLean has also been donating meals five days a week to all Mount Sinai Hospital locations, feeding first responders and providing meals to thousands of seniors in Miami-Dade County,” Harris said.

In April, DeliverLean also launched a drive to collect nonperishable foods from homes in the tri-county area as part of its food distribution efforts. DeliverLean said it has more than 400 drivers who can pick up the nonperishables.

DeliverLean is launching a food drive with Inter Miami CF at the soccer stadium in Fort Lauderdale and with the Miami Marlins at Marlins Park, Harris said.

Other notable contributions

American Airlines, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas, has donated 3,300 snack boxes to United Way of Miami-Dade. The boxes contain cheese crackers, beef bites and chocolate almonds.

Hip Rock Star, an advertising, marketing and communications agency in Palmetto Bay, is providing assistance so that small businesses can adjust their strategies to the new business climate. As the country emerges from the coronavirus restrictions and moves to recover economically, “We help people to change their business model and drive new business,” said Jessica Garrett Modkins, founder and president of Hip Rock Star.

Macy’s, based in New York City, provided $124,000 to support food banks in Florida.

Molina Healthcare of Florida donated $65,000 to 14 nonprofits in Florida, including six in the Miami area. About $50,000 of the total is going to South Florida organizations like Homestead-based Farm Share (distributing fresh products free of charge), Branches, Camillus House, Hispanic Coalition and the Miami Rescue Mission. Molina Healthcare of Florida is a unit of Molina Healthcare Inc., whose headquarters are in Long Beach, California.

Truly Nolen Pest Control teams provided sanitizing and disinfectant services free of charge to the cars of 75 employees at Nspire Healthcare Miami Lakes. The family-owned company, which was founded in Miami in 1938, now has its headquarters in Tucson, Arizona. Nspire, in Miami Gardens, is a nursing home that offers skilled nursing services plus memory and physical rehab.

Banks and other financial institutions offer help

IBERIABANK in Florida, a subsidiary of Louisiana-based IBERIABANK Corp., is donating $40,000 to Feeding South Florida, with $20,000 slotted for Miami-Dade. The bank has pledged a total of $500,000 to food banks across its footprint in Florida and several other states.

Mr. Cooper, one of the largest home loan-servicing companies in the county, is based in Dallas, Texas, and has a significant presence in South Florida. The company said it has helped about 9,000 customers in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area into “forbearance plans” for immediate mortgage relief. Forbearance means an agreement to delay foreclosure due to missed mortgage payments. Mr. Cooper, like other mortgage holders, may offer options — like payment deferrals, loan modifications and others — to people who can’t afford to make normal mortgage payments due to the recession.

Regions Foundation, the charitable division of Alabama-based Regions Bank, is granting $40,000 to Branches, a nonprofit in Miami. Branches, which helps working class families break the cycle of generational poverty, is now aiding micro-businesses to overcome financial challenges caused by the virus. Also, Regions Bank is donating $12,000 to Feeding South Florida, $10,000 to United Way of Miami-Dade and $7,500 to United Way of Broward. The bank and its foundation say they will continue to allocate funding to meet small business and community needs.

Wells Fargo Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the San Francisco multinational bank, announced donations to support community responses to COVID-19 in South Florida. The foundation said it is donating $45,000 to the United Way of Miami-Dade County and $45,000 to the United Way of Broward County. The money given to United Way of Miami-Dade will benefit the group’s Pandemic Response Fund, which provides emergency assistance to individuals, small businesses and nonprofits in Miami-Dade. These $90,000 donations are part of the bank’s $6.25 million in assistance to support domestic and international responses to COVID-19.

▪ This story was corrected and updated: Conviva Care Solutions is a medical management service company based in Miami; Truly Nolen was misspelled; and the square footage of a Pembroke Park warehouse donated by TBC to Feeding South Florida is 25,000 square feet.

This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Despite tough times, these Miami-area businesses are sharing what they have."