On or around March 9th, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsome issued a stay at home order and on March 16th he called for state wide closures of dine-in restaurants as part of the effort to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although food trucks were allowed to remain open, all catering events came to a complete halt as well as many locations where food trucks served. At the same time, medical professionals in our city’s hospitals have been working around the clock to treat individuals impacted by the virus— often at great risk to their own personal health.

My name is Steve Carlson and I am the founder of Food Smackdown, which arranges and books multiple food trucks in Orange County in Southern California for large events as well as smaller office lunch locations. The coronavirus has already taken its toll on the food industry including food trucks in these venues and I am fighting to keep the Orange County food trucks open by focusing on take-out and deliveries and the volume of orders has to ramp up for them to stay open.

At the same time as we have watched the news unfold in recent days and while many of us are sheltered at home, we can’t express our gratitude enough for the Orange County healthcare workers on the frontlines of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

As both of these collide - wanting to help food trucks as well as healthcare workers, we came across Feed the Frontlines NYC—an initiative to get more generous contributors to buy meals from restaurants around the city to be delivered to first responders. We were inspired to partner with this company and launch our own Feed the Frontlines organization in Orange County, CA to get contributors to buy meals from food trucks in Orange County to be delivered to healthcare workers.

The goal of this initiative is to keep members of our wonderful food trucks employed as we work to feed more of our healthcare professionals. We hope you’ll join us in this effort to keep Orange County healthy and well fed.