Chef Howard Hanna grew up with a strong sense of social justice and a connection between food and inequality. He witnessed the disparity between the comfortable lifestyle he had and the hunger experienced by others in his community. Initially, Hanna entered the restaurant industry for the fun and excitement it offered, but over time, he began to see the importance of food as a means of expression and addressing social issues. He believes that a diverse and resilient food system is necessary to tackle challenges like climate change and food scarcity. Hanna emphasizes the importance of indigenous knowledge in sustainable food production and advocates for a return to indigenous food ways. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanna and his team at The Rieger restaurant in Kansas City started the Crossroads Community Kitchen to provide meals to economically disadvantaged members of their community. The initiative aimed to address the needs of their staff, combat food waste, and support those who w
Hi, my name is Elle Hudson, and I'm here today with Julia Cole on behalf of Brave A Cozine. Today, we're talking with Howard Hanna, an award-winning Kansas City chef and engaged social activist. This is part of our series of creative insights, pairing responses from local artists with provocative interviews. We feature the voices of people across our city who are inventing alternative ways to live, work, and learn. We welcome your voice. Now, today's guest, Howard Hanna. Hi, Howard.
Thank you so much for sitting down with Julia and I. The first question we wanted to ask was, when did you first begin to see the connections between food and social justice? Pretty early. I don't know what age I was at, but I grew up seeing the connections, I think. Basically, my parents had three kids in four years, and so my mom stayed home with us early childhood. I feel like probably by the time I was in maybe second or third grade, she went back to work, and she actually switched careers at that point, and she took on a job as the director of a food bank in the town where we lived, which is Manhattan, Kansas, where I grew up.
My mom was very active in a lot of political stuff and a lot of community stuff in addition to her job, and she very much believed the kids were supposed to help with everything like that. And, yeah, just knowing that in the same small Midwestern town that we were in, where we lived pretty comfortably, I was well aware that there were people who were hungry and that that's not right. I didn't think about it too much in terms of a career or a calling or anything like that.
Honestly, when I got into food, it was for really different reasons. It was that I got a job as a teenager just because I needed a job for money, and so started working in restaurants, and I fell in love with restaurant culture and with the rush of service and the adrenaline you get and also being part of a team. I loved the diversity in restaurants. I loved the humor and the fun of it, and so I wasn't drawn to it for some greater purpose or even thinking about food as a really important way to express creativity or culture or anything like that.
Quite simply, it was fun to work in restaurants, and it took years after that before I shifted and took it more seriously and grew into viewing it as more connected to other things that were important to me. So along those lines, since you clearly grew into a love for food and food culture, but you all along had this sense of what was right and wrong about people having food or not having food, I wonder if you have a story from your childhood that illustrates how you had this understanding, or do you think that perspective of the largeness of what was wrong with this picture was something that you grew into later in life? That's a good question.
That's heavy, and I think that in a lot of ways, I didn't understand how big a problem it is and the ways it impacts every part of your life or every part of our society or our communities, but I do think it was something I was, at least for my age, I was very well aware of it. I also think besides what my mom did professionally, I think also the circumstances of my family and my upbringing probably showed me different ways to look at things.
We were an immigrant family. My dad was American, he was white, my mom was Samoan, and they met and fell in love and got married in Samoa and only moved to the U.S. when they were pregnant with my oldest sister, so they hadn't been here too long back in the States for my dad or in the States for the first time when I was born, and so we didn't have a lot of family here, and we were pretty isolated in the Midwest.
My parents moved there because of a job my dad got at K-State, and so there wasn't any community around us that had drawn us there, there wasn't any extended family, and culturally extended family and community are so, so important and foundational in Samoan culture. So it was strange to be exposed to that culture, but only in our house, not a real working larger or more complex way while being completely surrounded by U.S. culture in school and everything else I did, so knowing that I have all these people that look like me and that love me and that care about me and are invested in my future that live on the other side of the planet and I hardly ever saw them.
We were disconnected from them, but that culture and those people were always a really important thing in our home. So to have the juxtaposition of Samoa versus the U.S. and always be aware of that contrast, I think that comes into play very much with food, that Samoa was, I know in some circles third world isn't the term we use these days, but that's what my mom used and that's what most of my Samoan relatives used. So to know that it was a third world country and that my mom was literally born in a house with posts for the walls that had Matthew rolled down at night and a fast roof and a floor and that was it, and to know that what's considered poverty in the U.S.
wasn't everywhere else in the world and that things that I think here, the green food movement and the health movements and other things like that are seen as very bourgeois and very elitist and for rich people to eat, but my mom, she didn't have a pair of shoes until she was nine, but every single bite of food she ever ate was organic. Everything was sustainable. Everything was culturally appropriate and everything was local, right? And nobody ever starved to death in Samoa.
No one was ever homeless in Samoa. So to know that a country that can have little but still feed its people and feed its people well and know that this other country where we live is the exact opposite, where there's great wealth and tons of technology and we don't feed our people well. That's fascinating. That was always part of my awareness, I think. Thank you for sharing that story. In your vision, what would an ideal system of food production preparation and sharing look like? I think it's hard to answer because there's definitely not a one-size-fits-all answer or a simple answer.
I think that a food system would have to be really diverse to be resilient, to deal with all the things we're dealing with today with pandemics and deal with climate change and distribution issues and all water shortages and everything else. So I think we need to grow food for people in all the different ways we know how to. And I think that my idea of what this romantic vision of what the perfect farm is would be a huge part of a system of agriculture that could feed the world.
But I think it would not be, we can't all do that. There needs to be specialization in some places simply because of climate and soil types and things like that. And there needs to be creativity and diversity that I love to see with urban farming, how many people are growing food in cities now and in creative ways on rooftops and hydroponics and different systems to produce food. So I think it would have bits of a whole bunch of things.
But really, agriculture is the way that we actually interface with nature the most. I think that it's driven where and how and why humans live in certain places and develop in certain ways. And then the cultures and the technologies that we develop in those places, I think all originally, the answer was because there was something to eat there or because you could create something to eat there. And so I think that that hasn't changed, no matter how far removed the average urban U.S.
person is now from producing food. That still is true. You still eat three times a day. And so you're having an impact on the planet, on the environment, just by eating, just by staying alive. And so to deal with climate change, to deal with food scarcity and food insecurity, really, I don't have the answer for sure, and I don't think anybody does. But I do think we know it doesn't work. And that's capitalism, right? I mean, it's completely failed to feed the world, to feed us healthy in a healthy way that doesn't have ruinous impacts on the environment.
And so I think that returning to indigenous food ways would be a really important part of sustainability moving forward and a really important part of an equitable and just and fair food system. And so relearning or remembering or just listening to indigenous knowledge about food production every single place in the world, I think is going to have a lot of the answers of how we can provide food for the growing population and moving forward. And I think that in the US, there's a lot of people arriving at the right answers from a very different perspective.
I think there's a lot of people driven by Western science that are trying to figure out understanding the complexity of soil health and things like this. And they end up deciding that the very best techniques are techniques that indigenous scientists, indigenous experts already knew. The prairie near here, right, produce more pounds of meat per acre under indigenous land management than it does now. And so we can have all the inputs of biochemicals and do everything we can to boost food production and grow monocultures of corn and then feed that to cows that are given steroids and hormones and everything else and produce a ton of beef that way.
But also, if we just left this shit alone, we'd have more weight in bison than we would have in beef now. And to understand that that wasn't open land, that it didn't just happen that way. That was indigenous land management. And it worked before and it can work again. Yeah. I think that you touched on it by saying capitalism is a root level problem and it's a state of mind. And what you're talking about with indigenous land management is another state of mind.
Instead of always looking to make the most out of something, it's more about a balance of give and take. And what do you return? Do you return as much as you take from the land? So I'm going to move on to talking about a specific project that you were engaged in when the pandemic first hit Kansas City in 2020. I wonder if you remember the moment when you understood that you could offer a creative solution to match a need among economically disadvantaged members of our community, given what you were doing in the restaurant at The Rieger at the time.
Yeah. Tell us a little about The Rieger. So just give us a little background. Okay. So The Rieger was a restaurant that I was one of the partners in and the chef in for we had a run of 10 years and then closed during the pandemic. But basically we were in Kansas City and at the crossroads 20th and Main. And I think when we opened, it was 2010, at the end of 2010, it was like thinking about what was considered responsible sourcing and being one of the good guys in terms of how you ran a restaurant and how you approached food.
The term farm-to-table wasn't even cliche yet, it was still a really exciting idea for a lot of people. It was a new idea. And it was kind of like, if you want local tomatoes, then you were doing all the right things and that was good enough. And it's been incredible how much we've grown since then, that all the other issues that you have to consider and do well and communicate about to be considered one of the responsible operators now has really come a long way.
But I think we were always trying to be on the leading edge of that. We did a lot more than a lot of businesses for our staff. We started offering health insurance for everybody full-time on our staff in 2012 and that was definitely way ahead of most small independent restaurants. And same thing with our connection with knowing where the food came from and connections with farmers and other producers. At first, yeah, buying local stuff was good enough.
And then as relationships deepened with farmers, we started to pay more attention. Not only, yeah, we're going to cook with the seasons and we're going to try to cook what our region produces and highlight that, but we also tried to think about, okay, of all the farmers we could buy from growing these tomatoes, how do we decide who has the best practices? And obviously a lot of that is driven by taste and who has the most delicious food is a lot of times the right answer.
But we also got to know their methods and their systems and what was important to them. And more and more, I was learning a lot through conversations with farmers about how they were trying to regenerative agriculture, how they were trying to take care of the land, but actually restore soil health and all the things that would do for human health and for our local food system, that became more and more important. So at The Rieger, I think we were always kind of telling those stories and trying to make our decisions based on a good understanding of where our food came from.
We'll get into it later, I'm sure, but we failed in a ton of ways and did a really horrible job and we were very much part of a toxic culture. I was part of a toxic culture. I very much recognize that. But I think The Rieger sort of had a reputation for trying hard to do the right things. And then along came COVID-19. Yeah. It was, it was scary to watch what was happening on the East Coast and in other countries.
And when we began to realize there's no escaping it, it is coming here too, it's still, I think it felt pretty unreal until a couple weeks out. I think we still could kind of just go on like normal and, hey, it seems like sales are down a little bit from last year, but they're not way off. So I guess everything's okay. And our staff was talking a lot more about the pandemic and we were, it was on our minds, but it didn't really change our behavior too much until it was pretty close.
It was earlier, mid-March of 2020, I think, when cases started to spike and then when Kansas City did start to shut down and really our decision for how we wanted to respond to it and what we wanted to do for our team and for our community, we started thinking pretty seriously about that, honestly, just maybe a week or so before that. And it wasn't until, I think it was a Sunday, maybe, that Quinn Lucas announced that Casey would be having these shutdown things.
And I think it was going to start on a Tuesday, but like two days later, day and a half later or something, but it was basically after service that Saturday night, suddenly that weekend, we were dead. No one wanted to go to restaurants. Everyone knew the pandemic was real and it was here, well, not everyone, they still do. But a lot of our clientele wasn't comfortable leaving out. So yeah, it was clear, okay, even if the city doesn't shut down, what we're doing won't work.
We can't just stay open and pretend nothing's happening because we're going to go out of business because there's no business. So it was scary. And I went home that night and it was probably the middle of the night, that night, that I first had the idea of what later became the Crossroads Community Kitchen. But it was, I think, all the best ideas and really almost all ideas, period, come from collectives and collaboration and community, right? So it's not like I thought of this thing.
There's plenty of models that influenced my thinking and what I had already learned. Among them was, I had read Jose Andres' book, We Fed an Island. He wrote about the experience of doing food relief and cooking for people and trying to rebuild community and a food system in Puerto Rico after the twin hurricanes that were so devastating there a few years ago. And I had read his book about that effort and how they did it. And that was something that was definitely very much on my mind.
But I think also other things, including what my mom did when I was a kid. There were lots of reasons why I was able to have the idea of doing the Community Kitchen and take that idea seriously and put it into action. So it was that Sunday, I then woke up and started to think seriously about it and decided it was a good idea and it should be what we did. We had already a weekly schedule.
So I started talking about it to my managers. They were all very much on board and contributed their own ideas and ways we could figure it out and ways we could do this plan. We pitched it to our whole staff, maybe an hour after that, they were all on board. And then we sprung into action and started doing it. So we closed, I think, the day before, technically, Kansas City all shut down and we started serving meals that night as a Community Kitchen.
What drove that, though, was it was really three things. I was freaking out about how do we take care of our staff, really? If restaurants all closed, what the fuck are we going to do? Restaurant work is kind of transient. A lot of people do bounce from job to job, but they bounce from job to job in the same industry. And so normally, any one restaurant closing, everyone will be okay. They'll go work at the restaurant down the street.
But to know that we're all fucked at the same time, I was really scared about how to keep our team together and how to take care of our people. And so I wanted to keep us working. That was a big thing. Secondly, I wanted to, obviously, knowing that there were already so many people who were food insecure, but knowing that now there would suddenly be a lot more. And that not only would there be a lot more, a lot of those people would come from my industry and come from people I know personally and love and care a lot about.
That was a big concern, was do we have a responsibility to feed people? That's what we're good at. That's what we do. We should do it. And then the third part, really, was thinking about food waste. And this was something that I had been to through the James Beard Foundation. They had, the whole year before that, been focused very much on food waste and how that impacted the environment and our economics and everything else and how horrible we are about food waste.
And so to me, knowing that, okay, if every restaurant in town is going to shut down on the same day, from our situation, that we have a walk-in full of food that's going to go bad. We could split it up and give as much as we can to our staff and freeze as much as we can and try to salvage things. But no matter what, there was going to be a huge, huge amount of waste. And then to know that that was going to be times every restaurant in town doing the same thing at the same time, I was just, this is crazy.
Our people needed to be working. People needed to eat. And also, we need to stop all this food from going bad. So those three things together, it just really was obvious. Okay, we save the food from all these restaurants that are closing, turn it into meals and feed people. And that way, we get to keep our team together and keep working. So that was the basic idea. And then we just took off. It grew and changed a ton and really quickly.
And I think after I kind of pitched that initial idea, from then on, I don't feel like I was ever really the driving force of it. I think our team really, really came together in cool ways that we hadn't before. And it went on for five months, we did this. And there were all these points where somebody got sick and had to be out or somebody just kind of burned out or somebody, you know, whatever. But there was always someone who stepped in at the right time and the community support first from the restaurant community, a lot of other people donating their food to us was huge.
We had a ton of patrons and fans of the restaurant industry in general, donating financially, which helped us be able to pay our people for the first month or so it was entirely through donations. You started a fundraiser, didn't you? Yeah. And our first idea was we would just serve meals. And we wouldn't announce the menu because it was just based on what we had to cook. But we would serve meals and we thought that it would be people who were probably already hungry, already food insecure.
They would just come and eat and it was free. But we thought also that a lot of other people, that would be the way that they could jump in and support. So we did it as like pay as you can. And so some people who were regulars at the restaurant would come in and they'd buy dinner for their family of four, but then leave us $300 or something. And that could fund a lot of the other meals.
But pretty quickly, it became clear that most of the people that could contribute financially and were in that situation where they weren't personally worried about food, they didn't want to stand in this line and eat this food necessarily. So it kind of quickly became, okay, that pay as you go didn't make sense for us in our specific conditions. So then we started a GoFundMe that entirely went to our staff. All of the food was purely from donations and the vast majority from other restaurants, but it did start to come from individuals as well.
And that donation model lasted the first month and a half or so before we started to find sources of funding a little bit. It was incredible. It completely shifted the way we made decisions in the restaurant and the way we defined our work and when over half your staff in a normal restaurant is front of the house, you know, they're good at speaking with guests and serving tables and they're knowledgeable on the spirits and the wine list and all that stuff.
But now we're a community kitchen, and we're not allowed to welcome people into the restaurant anymore. And we're not allowed to use all those skills they had. Well, they're suddenly all cooks too. So anybody would unload the truck when it pulled up in the back alley to drop off a bunch of food to us. Whoever could do it just did it. And whoever could cook cooked and whoever could fill 300 boxes to send to the shelter or the school or whatever would just do that.
So it really blurred all the lines of hierarchy, but also stations and or like departments, right? So everyone was just doing what needed to be done. And we do have different talents. The best cooks kind of kept cooking and other people did the other stuff. But it was really cool to see that there was no longer a distinction between a prep cook and the sous chef or the sous chef and a server or the server and the bartender.
We were just all in it together. And we were all scared. We were all in the same we're fucked if we don't do this situation. But also, we all got really excited about the chance when the world was so confusing and so scary to know that, hey, at least here's food that's going to go to the trash. Here's someone that's hungry, like, let's make something nice and give it to them. It was just to know that you were doing something right.
When nobody knew what to do was really valuable and really a team building experience for us to go through that together. It must have felt great to be part of a collective spirit. People were pulling together and stepping up and doing their part. And I know you went on to form a collective with other restaurant owners and Canby's Market. Is that correct? Um, that's kind of a long and complicated story, but yes, we weren't the driving force for that.
Basically, it was some other chefs in town and some other people involved in the food system came together and that was where funding started to come from. It was Chef's Collective, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I haven't thought about it in a while. But basically, the idea there was that they would together promote the kind of work we were doing, set up other restaurants to do similar things in similar ways, and then get big donations basically from corporations to fund our work so we would start getting paid by the number of meals we produced.
It wasn't much, but it was enough. It was something, I don't remember, maybe we got $1.35 per person we served or whatever. And basically, that kicked in maybe six weeks into what we were doing. At the beginning of the GoFundMe, people are so generous and they can afford to give a lot, but the longer the shutdown lasted and the longer the pandemic, the more scary it became. People had less ability to support what we were doing.
But also, we lost all that supply of food from once all the restaurants emptied their walk-ins and gave it to us, then that's not going to keep happening. So it came at the right time. We needed to find a way to get paid. And also, when we could no longer depend on pay we used to just put on Facebook, we could really use $500 to-go boxes for the next day. Somebody would come through with $500 to-go boxes, but after a while it stopped happening.
We'd put the call out and we'd get $50 to-go boxes. So we'd have to start buying them. And at that point, Rieger couldn't do it, we didn't have the money to do it. So when we started getting paid, we could then buy things and we kept our people paid, which was huge. Unfortunately, though, the way that went was they were in talks with a lot of big donors They're big potential donors. And so it just blew up and expanded really quickly.
And they pushed us. The more you can do, the better. Do all you can. So we had connections with shelters and all kinds of different nonprofits in the area. And when we had it, we would drop off $50 here and $100 here or whatever. But now we were in a position where we could say, how many do you actually need? And then we would do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we give $300 at 11am to this group. And then Tuesdays and Thursdays, we give $500 to this group in the evening.
And then still serving meals on our front door to whoever showed up. So we really ramped up because of promised funding. And that dried up pretty quick. And it really screwed us. I think that's honestly, that's why the Rieger's closed, is because we kind of went through all our own money, thinking we were going to get reimbursed. Yeah, yeah. Sort of segues into my next question, I guess. Yeah. For you, what worked best about the Crossroads Community Kitchen? And do you have a favorite story that illustrates this? It was weird.
We were so scrappy and ragtag and just literally food would come in the back door. And as fast as we could, we would flip it, cook it, turn it into something. And immediately we needed that. And that was going out the front door. So it was just, I've never cooked like that, where you can't plan menus in advance because you don't know what you're using. And with all the shit that was going on in our lives, and with the business and with the world, it's hard to even put much value on having fun.
It was really fucking fun. That's why we kept doing it, because we didn't burn out, because it was creatively challenging and really rewarding and fulfilling in some of these high and idealistic and moral ways. But it was also fun. Every day was a challenge. And that's what it feels like in a restaurant when you're slammed on Saturday night and everything's going great and you're dealing with all those different things at once and doing it well and making people happy.
We got that feeling all day, every day. And I think the things that worked best, though, a big lesson that I think I was learning during this time, but I didn't even have the time to reflect on it until after we closed, was that we had shifted how we decided things. Restaurants in particular, kitchens in the Western world are very hierarchical and very much top down. And really, we were all in it together. We were all just as screwed as the person next to us.
And so that was the great equalizer, right? We're in the sinking ship together, what are we going to do? And so everyone had an equal voice, and it just made sense, and that's what happened. And so we started making decisions based on consensus and all the big things that happened like, hey, do we want to start only serving out the front door or delivering too? And if so, how do we do it? We would decide together.
Do we want to only serve during certain hours or take orders for certain other times? But how do we do that? We would decide that together. Who's going to work Thursday? It's not longer the chef gets to write the schedule and everybody has to do it. It's now who can work Thursday, who wants to work Thursday? And also the decision that we serve seven days a week for the first nine or 10 weeks. The restaurant was only open six days a week, so that was just because we wanted to, and we all decided we had the capacity to do it.
So that idea of everyone having a voice and making decisions based on consensus, not top down, was really liberating. For me, like I said, I didn't get it then, it was later, and maybe I'm still figuring it out, but I know I was learning a lot of shit from that, that the way that felt natural and resonated to me, I think is a cultural thing. I think that that, or maybe it's just a human thing. But to me, that was how they would have done it in Samoa, right? That's how my family would have thought about it.
That's how my mom would have taught me to think about it, would be everyone matters, everyone has a say, and you decide what's best together, not you're the chef, you have to have the answer. When nobody in the fucking world knew how to deal with this, why would some dipshit from Kansas figure it out and solve it, you know, like I'm not going to be the one. So it wasn't, I know what to do, it was, well, we'll put our heads together and try shit and see what works, see what doesn't, and something will work.
That's kind of how it went, and that really now has changed how I want to run a restaurant. And the new projects I'm working on, we want to set them up as worker-owned cooperatives. You'll still have job titles, you still have different specialization and different levels of expertise and skills required, but I want the basic way that we treat each other and the basic way we approach how we run the business to be what we did in the community kitchen.
Because it felt natural, it felt right, and it really did work. We kicked a lot of ass, and so that was a huge lesson. It sounds like a thrilling experience to be such a part of GroupGenius and everybody being aligned in purpose and pulling together. I know that you talked a little bit about some of the difficulties that you had with people who had promised you money, not actually coming through with the money. I'm sure there must have been some other major difficulties that you faced, either with community support or other things that had to do with basically trying to run something that was not a for-profit venture in a city that's really targeted towards that kind of a model.
So I wonder if you could just maybe give us an example of something that was one of those difficulties. Yeah, there were a lot, and even dealing with how you set up a GoFundMe but then pay your staff with it, what entity is writing checks and how, and we ran that stuff through the restaurant but it was not the correct way to do it. So there were all kinds of paperwork things that were wrong and challenging and harder than they should have been.
But there was also, I don't want to sound, I don't know, I'm not trying to shit on anybody in the community and anybody that it was our neighbor that was trying to survive this thing in their own way. They have their self-interest and their maybe business interest or whatever at stake too and they conflicted with ours. I'm not trying to talk shit, but basically while the overwhelming majority of the restaurant community, especially Kansas City in general, fans of the Rieger in general, showed up and supported us in huge ways, there were people that made everything way harder.
There were people that called the cops on the people we were serving. There were people that called the health department on us. There were people that complained to the Neighborhoods Association, complained to the city, complained to every different agency of the city. Basically, they didn't like, they're being poor people on our block all day, every day. And I mean, that's the bottom line. There always were poor people, but they didn't want to see them like that.
And it's really, I think a lot of people will just hear this and be, well, yeah, of course that's what happened. But it was. The people who a lot of times had the least to give were the most generous and a lot of times the people who had the most were the least generous and the people who could afford lofts in the crossroads or condos or luxury apartments were pretty pissed about there being a line of odd house folks outside of the soup kitchen where there used to be this cool restaurant that they used to go to.
And that was really disappointing and shitty. And I think that tells a lot about who we are as this country, this society, whatever, or the city. But I do think everyone across a lot of different demographics contributed and was supportive. Including volunteering to drive for us to drop off meals at shelters and go to the store for us, whatever. And people were great in general and all different kinds of people were great. But you could say coincidentally, but I don't think it's coincidence.
People started cooking for our staff and would just come in and here's some food for you. You're feeding all of us. Here's something for you. And the first five restaurants that did that, one, two, three, four, five in a row that did that were all immigrant owned businesses. And then everyone who was on our block that had money that was calling the cops on us was mostly white people. You know? Yeah. Take from that what you will, but that's what fucking happened.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that definitely segues into our next question. What would need to change in our city culture, do you think, to encourage and support such creative solutions in the future? It was hard because so many of the barriers that just seemed stupid to us, that someone was making something harder and it didn't have to be outside of the pandemic. There were issues. I think it was hot soup. KC was serving unhoused people in parks and it was people, volunteers who cooked in their own homes and then serve people in a park.
And the health department would hassle them and shut them down. And one kind of famous incident, they took a lot of the food and destroyed it in front of hungry people. If you pour bleach on food that was cooked with love, straight up, that was love. Why they did it was to love somebody and give somebody love. And you're going to fucking pour bleach on it in front of the person that was hungry and that wanted it and needed it.
You're a devil. That is right and wrong. You're a fucking devil. And I hate you. But at the same time, I'm like, how do we run a fucking society? How do we run a city? Should there be health codes? Should there be restaurant inspections? Of course, there should. And that is for the greater good and that is for the public health. And so I don't know how you draw the line of keep some of those structures, but have them do a lot better job of treating people.
I don't think there's any small reformist things that can make the city better. I feel like for more things like the Crossroads Community Connection to succeed and keep happening in the long term and address ongoing needs, not response to crisis, it's more of a revolutionary change, right? It's more our whole economic system has to change, not just some city ordinance. Unfortunately, I think that's probably true. But it did feel like there were times where during it, we were trying so hard and it was so much work.
And in the end, we served 85,000 meals. And then the fucking restaurant closed anyway. And that was my dream. That was my dream restaurant. That's what I always thought I wanted. And it closed and I haven't bounced back yet. I haven't recovered from that personally or professionally or financially. And I think just objectively, almost anyone from almost any vantage point in the US can say every level of our government failed us, federal, state, local, county, city.
No one did the right thing. No one kept us safe. No one kept us housed. No one kept us fed. To me, it's fucking broken. It couldn't be clearer. It's broken. So that shit hurt a lot. Our team served 85,000 meals. And because of the goodness of people's hearts and the work of other people who supported us, Governor Parsons could give a shit less. Even Clinton Lucas, who was trying and did care on a lot of levels, a lot better than a lot of people.
He never so much as stopped by to see the thing. He never so much as said, thank you. Because those 85,000 meals went to his fucking people that he's supposed to take care of. I don't know what I want. It's not a thank you. I want it to have been economically supported. Well, I can't tell you how much we appreciate your telling us this story because it seems to me in that last section you were talking about how people were working so hard from the goodness of their hearts.
And it's such a cliched expression. But I think when you're talking in one breath about revolutionary change and you're talking about the thrill and the delight and the sheer joy that comes from working together with other people to make this kind of change happen, this is a revolution inside of people. It's not specific solutions. It's like you're saying, you know, the city's got to keep having health codes, but maybe the way that they're drawn up and the way that they're enforced and the way that they're overseen and shifted over time, that's changed by something that comes from inside of people instead of a calculation or transactional way of thinking about it.
Thank you. I love the way you summarized that. I think that really resonates with what our experience was. I know it was life changing and the people who were on our team and went through that together, none of us were the same after it and all of us will remember it. I feel like that's the shit you tell your grandkids, right? Like, what did you do during the pandemic? And we've had 85,000 people. That's what that feels good.
And it was so cool to see the different talents we have. You know, we would serve, for the most part, fairly wealthy and fairly worldly and knowledgeable clientele in the dining room. But when we went to serving people who weren't paying us and they weren't tipping, how much they appreciated what we were doing. And to see them create regulars with our new clientele who was so different and our new system of serving, which was from a folding table in front of the restaurant instead of in the nice dining room, getting to know people and getting to be part of their lives and build relationships with them, all that stuff.
I was just really so proud of our team to see them taking care of people that way and showing respect and love and not just feeding them. I'm getting worked up about it. It was beautiful. And then for my cooks to see how much we love cooking. So much of it is ego-driven and competitive and really even like cutthroat, right, in professional kitchens and in fine dining. And that shit just went away. And it was just like the pure way of cooking.
It was just the craft and weird challenges. All the canned frozen things and commodity frozen boneless, skinless turkey breasts that we don't serve and I hadn't cooked with, like, maybe ever, you know, or at least not for years. To flip that and try to make it as great as we could, as quickly as we could and put it in a box. At first, I thought our team was special. Then I thought maybe it was just restaurant people.
But then I think it was what you were talking about, Julia, the people working together and being aligned with a cause and being part of a collective. I think anyone would respond well in those conditions. And if you look at the way most societies for most of human history have been organized, that's how everything got done. That's how everything got done. And that makes me really optimistic about the future, that I can still be a chef.
I can still run a restaurant. But I'm going to do it as a collective. I'm going to do it as a worker-owned co-op. And hopefully we can bring some of that, the strengths of what I learned at the Community Kitchen, to bear on just, hey, it's a normal for-profit business. But we can capture some of that spirit and some of that, the things that worked about it. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Wow. We so appreciate the way that you've brought this story to share as such a great example of how small ideas that happen in the right place at the right time and with goodwill and enough expertise and a lot of hard work can really make a huge difference.
Thank you so much, Howard. Yeah. Thank you, Howard. And you can often find squirrels taste like chicken.
