RESTAURANT WORKERS RELIEF PROGRAM

Through our Restaurant Workers Relief Program, The LEE Initiative empowers our vital locally-owned restaurants to serve their communities, funding their services and directly benefiting their employees as they in turn do what they do best: feed those in need. In March of 2020, as the restaurant industry faced unprecedented challenges, The LEE Initiative leaped into action–with the support of our partners in good, we turned one restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, into a relief center for out of work industry employees. We fed 300 people that night and, by the end of 2020, we served more than one million meals, across dozens of cities and nearly 20 states. We empowered our partner restaurants to hire back their staff to support these relief efforts by providing direct funds. In 2021, a tornado devastated parts of Western Kentucky, and the following year a flood ravaged our neighbors in the Eastern part of the state. We funded local restaurants to provide over 100K free meals to communities in WKY, and invested over $350K in relief efforts to EKY, serving free meals and fully funding farmers markets to provide fresh produce to their communities. Realizing that we must always be prepared to jump in and help our communities, The LEE Initiative created and maintains a fund for future relief work.