Lebanese-born and Spanish-raised chef Mimmo Alboumeh marries his diverse culinary background with a love for fresh, bold flavors at Red Pepper Taqueria. When restaurants and bars closed at the start of the coronavirus crisis, Alboumeh used his kitchen to feed those experiencing homelessness. He also partnered with Daniel Troppy of Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) to deliver meals to Lost-N-Found Youth, an Atlanta shelter for young people in the LGBTQ+ community.

When the pandemic took hold, executive chef Maricela Vega took action — by transforming her restaurant 8ARM into a takeaway model with a CSA program featuring fresh produce from local farmers. She also teamed up with the Atlanta-based art nonprofit Living Walls to create the Each One, Feed One program; for every CSA box purchased, another box will go to to an undocumented family through Freedom University. Vega told us: “There were a few times where I went to help distribute the boxes for Each One, Feed One, and the students would just look at you and say, ‘You have no idea how much this really means to us.’” Recently, Vega also announced that she’d be adding a 20-percent service charge to all orders so that 8ARM’s employees can be guaranteed a living wage.

Longtime Atlanta restaurateur Linton Hopkins joined forces with fellow chefs Michael Lennox and Edward Lee on the Restaurant Workers Relief Program. Together they combined resources to create #ATLFamilyMeal, delivering essential food (1,800 meals a week), cleaning supplies, diapers, and personal hygiene products to restaurant employees who had been laid off or seen a significant reduction in pay. They also provided 2,400 meals a week to doctors, nurses, and medical workers through Emory University’s Feed the Frontlines project, and 5,600 meals a week to families with children, shut-ins, and other at-risk families in the Buford Highway Corridor through We Love BuHi and World Central Kitchen. 

Big Dave’s CEO and founder Derrick Hayes does more than keep Atlanta fed with his award-winning sandwiches. During the pandemic, Hayes and his employees have fed health care workers at Atlanta hospitals and donated to the family of Rayshard Brooks, the man fatally shot by Atlanta police in late June. Most recently, Hayes showed up with baby supplies and offered jobs to teens selling water on the streets, welcoming them to the Big Dave’s family.

When owners Monica and Jayson Smith opened their first location of Mr. Everything Cafe in downtown Atlanta in 1993, they did so to provide jobs and healthy food options for the community. Now five locations strong (with four in Georgia and one in Louisiana), Mr. Everything continues to act as a pillar of the community, having offered discounts on their sandwiches, salads, and protein-powered rice bowls to doctors, nurses, first responders, firefighters, educators, sanitation workers, social workers, flight attendants, postal workers, grocery employees, and other essential workers.

Why let meat-eaters have all the fun? This plant-based food truck serves dishes with irreverent names like One Night Stand and Menage a Trois, but owner Aisha “Pinky” Cole is working toward an important mission. Her eponymous foundation provides education and resources to help communities of color achieve economic progress and break cycles of poverty. She recently partnered with HBCU Clark Atlanta University in a joint effort to send the four children of Rayshard Brooks to college.

Little Tart’s picture-perfect pastries made with local, seasonal fruit should be all the motivation you need to visit the Cabbage Town cafe. But the shop is committed to much more than making incredible danishes and bostocks. On Father’s Day, they teamed up with restaurants and bars across the South to raise nearly $100,000 for Color of Change, an organization that seeks to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America. They just hosted another social-justice bake sale on August 22.