Off Their Plate

Palisadian Christine Kanoff Helped Launch a Meal-Providing Initiative

By LILY TINOCO | Reporter

Palisadian Christine Kanoff recently helped launch the Off Their Plate initiative—which has partnered with local restaurants to both provide nearly 70,000 meals per week to food insecure healthcare staff.

The initiative, which began in Boston and San Francisco, is now serving a total of nine cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

“Just as frontline healthcare workers appear to turn a corner during this harrowing time,” the Off Their Plate website says, “our country is facing an urgent community hunger crisis, astronomical in scale.”

To date, the volunteer-led organization has raised a total of $5.7 million, with every $100 donated providing 10 meals to healthcare workers or those in need of a meal. This week, Off Their Plate has set a fundraising goal of $750,000 “to serve as many meals to food insecure populations” as they can during this time.

“A lot of us are involved in healthcare in different ways … and one of the things we learned through talking to people who are in the ER is that they’re working these extremely long shifts and they don’t even have meals,” Kanoff said to the Palisadian-Post. “That’s what really inspired it, this feeling of really wanting to help.”

Kanoff shared that she typically volunteers at a free clinic, but due to the pandemic, she could not do that anymore. She thought of the ways that she could help given the circumstances and considered the ways local restaurants were suffering also.

“We figured out a way to support two frontlines: the healthcare workers and the restaurant workers,” Kanoff said. “We’ve partnered with a small number of local restaurants and allowed those restaurants to bring back some of their staff that they unfortunately had to lay off and they create these meals and deliver them to hospitals, clinics or centers.”

In LA, Off Their Plate has partnered with restaurants like Malibu Farms, serving meals to over 14 hospitals and healthcare facilities, including UCLA, USC Medical Center, Sherman Oaks Hospital and Centinela Hospital Medical Center.

Kanoff said the organization’s mission is currently expanding and they are working on serving meals to local communities, partnering with community organizers and shelters.

Palisadians are invited to get involved by becoming a healthcare partner, restaurant partner or volunteer.

For more information or to get involved, visit offtheirplate.org or email christine@offtheirplate.org.