November/December 2020

When COVID-19 hit the foodservice industry, La
Tablée des Chefs brought it together to create meals
for those in need
BY ROSANNA CAIRA
When the hospitality industry
became one of the biggest
casualties of the global COVID-
19 pandemic earlier this year,
it left a huge surplus of food
with no home. “The hospitality
industry was hit so fast that we needed first to
recover a lot of food from closing establishments
to direct towards food,” explains Jean-
Francois Archambault, founder and director
of the Montreal-based La Tablée des Chefs, a
non-profit group focused on food-recovery
programs as a way to feed those in need.
But it didn’t stop there, says the tireless
industry advocate. “Our school program,
Kitchen Brigades, also had to stop because
[the government] closed down the schools,
so we needed to go virtual and try to reach
kids in a different way,” he explains. “We also
realized a lot of people would not receive the
food they needed because of a shortage of
volunteers in the community, mainly because
of confinement.”
Undaunted by the massive challenges,
Archambault quickly pivoted. “We got our
chefs involved in cooking for the community,”
and launched Solidarity Kitchens, a food-prep
initiative boasting more than 70 kitchens that
prepped the meals and created more than two
-million meals for the community in Quebec
and other large Canadian cities — mainly
Vancouver and Toronto. “We got the chefs
back in their kitchens and more than 600
tons of food donated in order to prep these
meals and distribute them to food banks. It
was massive; [we did] all that in five months,”
boasts the father of twins. And, he launched a
virtual Kitchen Brigades Workshop in order to
reach teenagers at home.
With razor-sharp focus, La Tablée des
Chefs linked itself with the Food Security
emergency committee and the Association of
Food Banks in Quebec and also drew support
from Vancouver and Toronto through Second
Harvest. “We worked with the Minister
of Agriculture in Quebec and Agriculture
Canada to seek guidance and [to receive]
funds out of emergency grants.
38 FOODSERVICE AND HOSPITALITY NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 FOODSERVICEANDHOSPITALITY.COM