Mercy Chefs helped restore hope in the aftermath of
Hurricane Florence by providing quality meals
Comfort Food
BY SIMON GONZALEZ
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MERCY CHEFS
THINK “first responder,” and the image that comes to mind prob-ably
isn’t a chef. But in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, one
of the first nonprofits to arrive in Wilmington was Mercy Chefs,
an organization that prepares and serves restaurant-quality
meals in the aftermath of disasters.
“Mercy Chefs is a first responder,” says founder Gary LeBlanc. “We pride ourselves
in being first on the scene. We take a high-volume restaurant and put it on the
road where there’s no water or power. We bring the first three-and-a-half days of
meals in a refrigerated truck with us.”
The group arrived with staff members, volunteers, a mobile kitchen, and a refrig-erated
trailer two days after Florence made landfall. It set up in the parking lot of
Lifepoint Church off South College, and served 700 meals the following day.
From additional sites in Wilmington, Elizabethtown, and Fayetteville, the
Virginia-based organization served nearly 40,000 meals to storm victims, first
responders and volunteers before demobilizing the last week of September. Even
after the mobile kitchen and refrigerated truck pulled out, volunteer chefs stayed
in Wilmington to prepare meals in Global River Church’s kitchen.
Mercy Chefs' mission is to “provide comfort in the midst of a desperate situation”
and to “feed the body and the soul of every person who walks up to our kitchen.”
“We say that something amazing happens over a shared meal,” LeBlanc says. “We
try to create that table of hospitality.”
Numerous nonprofits and volunteers came to
New Hanover County and the greater Cape Fear
Region after the hurricane, motived by nothing
more than the desire to help. We’d like to extend
a big thank you to everyone who came by featur-ing
one of those organized entities.
Gary LeBlanc established Mercy Chefs in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated
the Gulf Coast in August 2005. “New Orleans was
my hometown,” he says. “I went down to do the
only thing I knew how to do, which was cook for
people. I heard God call me to do this. This has
been a ministry of obedience.”
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WBM november 2018