On Tuesday afternoon, the scene at Blue Star Diner is a typical one. The popular Bridgeland dining spot is packed with a late lunch crowd, as co-owner Shayne Perrin pauses briefly to survey the busy room.
“We wanted a business that was strongly connected to the community,” says Perrin, who opened the diner with his wife Jodi in 2011. “It had to be something that also gave back to the community.”
The couple has succeeded in that, and then some. Since summer of 2013, they have funded nearly 20,000 meals for the city’s needy youth, through their partnership with a non-profit agency called Mealshare (mealshare.ca).
That’s where the atypical part of this particular day comes in.
Just after the lunch rush, the Perrin’s and Mealshare’s co-founders, Andrew Hall and Jeremy Bryant, mark the one-million meal mark, in a celebration attended by friends, family, supporting restaurants and representatives from charities that have benefitted from its buy-one, give-one approach to battling hunger — all recorded by a national CBC documentary crew.
Today, the Calgary-born charity has more than 270 partner restaurants across the country, with the numbers growing by the day. They’ve chosen Blue Star for their celebration because it’s not only the first restaurant that bought into their idea, it’s also been their best meal-raising independent restaurant partner in Calgary, the hometown of Hall and Bryant, both 27.
It is such a simple, straightforward concept that when you first hear about it, Mealshare seems like one someone would have have thought up long ago.
The two cousins thought so as well when they devised their charitable endeavour back in 2013. “We were inspired by the Ocean Wise campaign you see in some restaurants,” says Hall of the campaign that partners with restaurants to ensure an ocean-friendly seafood choice on menus. “We first thought, maybe we could open our own restaurant and introduced the buy-one, give-one idea there.”
Only problem was, neither of them had any connections in the restaurant business; ditto when it came to skills in the kitchen or background in serving customers. “No one would want to eat any food we made,” says Bryant with a laugh. “So we knew pretty quickly that might not fly.”
What the native Calgarians had to offer, though, was a lot of heart and the business acumen to make their shared dream a reality.
Sandra Bryant holds up her Crab Toast plate, the meal before the millionth served for Mealshare Tuesday November 1, 2016 at Blue Star Diner in Bridgeland. Selected menu items help the Mealshare charity to feed the needy.
“We grew up in families where helping out was just expected,” says Bryant, who remembers joining his parents to volunteer at local charities like Inn from the Cold.
For a while, though, regular life got in the way. For university, the duo went their separate ways, Hall to study business in Victoria, Bryant to Edmonton for an accounting degree. “Suddenly we were working for big companies, not really doing anything for the community,” says Bryant. “It wasn’t the way we’d pictured it.”
In early 2013, the two were visiting Dairy Lane, a regular haunt for both their families. They mentioned their idea to Shayne and Jodi, who had taken over the historic dining spot in 2004.
“The timing was serendipitous,” says Shayne Perrin of the concept. “We wanted to do something like this, but we were so busy just running the restaurant and raising our two kids.”
Like so many others that would join up over the next three years, Perrin loved the fact that by simply having a couple of menu items with the Mealshare logo, he and his wife could help out such worthy charities as the Calgary Drop-In Centre, the Calgary Food Bank and the International Children’s Hunger Fund.
“We check in once a month and find out how many Mealshare dishes were purchased,” says Hall, who then tabulates how much that translates into monetary donation.
Hall and Bryant, along with six other employees across the country, draw salaries from the non-profit, but estimate that after administration and programming expenses, 70 per cent of the funds collected goes directly to the charities.
On hand to help them celebrate the million-mark, Elena Remoundons talks about the positive impacts her employer’s partnership with Bryant and Hall has had on everyone.
“The best part has been how our teams have connected with the charities we’re helping,” says Remoundons, the marketing and communication manager for the Calgary-founded Original Joe’s restaurant chain, which raised the funds for 150,000 of those one million meals.
“Last year, our team members put in more than 2,000 volunteer hours.”
Jordan Hamilton also loves both the primary and secondary effects Mealshare has had on charities like his.
“We’ve been able to offer even more delicious, nutritious meals, thanks to our partnership,” says Hamilton, external relations manager for the Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre. “It’s not just filling bellies — it’s lifting spirits as well.”
