Dining out is taking on a charitable twist for a new Steveston restaurant.
Living Cafe, a gluten-free eatery which opened in August, is the first local establishment to sign on with Mealshare, a non-profit group that raises funds for a host of charities providing meals for the needy.
Under the program starting Nov. 14, customers picking a menu item with the Mealshare logo beside it will have a portion of the food cost donated to a charity.
It's an idea Mealshare's founders - cousins Jeremy Bryant and Andrew Hall, plus UVic Commerce student Derek Juno - came up with about a year back after seeing how their work with a number of volunteer groups had significant impact.
That got the trio talking about how they could make a difference, and that's when they came up with the "one-for-one" meal concept.
"We thought, wouldn't that be an amazingly powerful idea if we could capture that for food," said Juno, adding statistics show eight million Canadians eat out each day. "If
we could get a small portion of that, it would solve so many problems."
Mealshare was started in Calgary, spread to Edmonton, and now Victoria and Metro Vancouver are set to go this month. In total, 17 restaurants have signed up. For Amanda Kroetsch, who runs Living Cafe with her father Kevin, the decision to join was easy.
Kroetsch had already wanted to initiate a charitable component to her business to feed Downtown
Vancouver's homeless community with meals cooked fresh from a portable kitchen. And Mealshare's focus ticked off a number of similar boxes.
"The fact the Mealshare program had a similar vision as ours made it a no-brainer to join," Kroetsch, "and it allowed us to start feeding people much sooner than we had planned."
Funds raised through Mealshare are distributed through regional charitable groups in the areas they serve.
For more information on Mealshare, visit mealshare.ca.
