Coronavirus

Life Has Changed: St. Paul Restaurant Reopens As Community Kitchen

Forced to close his restaurant by coronavirus, St. Paul chef reopens as a community kitchen with a promise to feed the needy.

Life Has Changed: St. Paul Restaurant Reopens As Community Kitchen
D.A. Bullock / Newsy
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My name is Brian Ingram. We’re at Hope Breakfast Bar. A week ago, we were a bustling restaurant with hundreds of people coming in.

About a week and a half ago, even before the governor's order, we decided to shut our restaurant down and become a community kitchen. We did a post out on social media, just any family in need, not just kids, but grandparents, anybody. It didn't matter. If you were a family in need and you needed a meal, just reach out to us. If you can't get here, we'll deliver it to you. 

We started getting hundreds of requests coming in. And then right after that we had hundreds of people asking if they could volunteer, if they could show up. Our staff that we had to lay off just kept showing up every single day to help us to be able to fulfill all these needs. 

It was some of the most heart wrenching things I've ever seen. There were families. There was what looked like a soccer mom pulled up, a dog in the van and kids in the van saying she was homeless. Her car was about to run out of gas, and they hadn't eaten. 

Those kinds of stories just keep coming, more and more. It's all shapes, sizes, colors. It's everybody that's coming in. How are they going to long term pay their rent? How are they going to long term feed their families. What happens a week from now, two weeks from now, three weeks from now?

If you can't feed your family the steps that you'll take to feed them. My hopes are that the government and everybody steps away from all of the pointing fingers and all of the madness that's been going on for the last year. And everybody just kind of figures out that love's the only thing.