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Hi, my name is Lindsay Offsasic. I am the Co -Founder and Managing Director of the Lee Initiative. Our mission has always been to find innovative solutions to address anything that is holding our industry back.

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In 2017, that was getting more women into leadership roles through mentorship. In 2020, it was feeding our industry and supporting the workers who had lost their positions and needed support feeding their families.

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As we created this model, we quickly learned that whenever there is a disaster somewhere in the country, chefs are the first people that you can call and you can empower them to be in support of their community.

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The Lee Initiative for the first five years was really focused on dealing with inequities within the restaurant industry. And now we want to look forward into how do we create roadmaps to make this a kinder and more sustainable industry for the next generation.

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M. Francis is an experimental think tank restaurant where we can take all of the ideas that we have researched with our mentees and mentors and really take those and put them into a collaborative space. Currently,

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all we hear is the narrative that finding restaurants are not sustainable and they are not a part of the community that they're in. And we don't believe that. We believe that you can have luxury and responsibility. We believe that you can create wage models that are sustainable for people to create careers.

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Within this restaurant, we will not just be innovative in our sustainability and labor practices. We see culinary as an arch. We will show people that you can source your food seasonally. You can source food locally and you can create something beautiful.