Austin News

When Austin was blanketed with a snowstorm Valentine’s Day weekend, widespread power outages resulted, causing restaurants to lose one of their busiest weekends of the year.

Food blogger Jane Ko, who had raised money for restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, quickly launched another emergency campaign to help the restaurants and Austin residents longing for a hot meal.

“Let’s do something,” she told her social media followers, “Let’s launch another fund.”

She started a GoFundMe page, contributing the first $500, with a goal of raising $10,000. Entertainment website 365 Things Austin and public relations firms Mylk Collective and Cara Caulkins Communications joined the effort.

“We reached the $10,00 goal in 2 hours,” Ko told the Austin News. “By the end of the day we had $20,000. In four days we raised over $150,000.”

The money was used to buy 30,000 meals at more than 50 restaurants in Austin.

The meals went to hospitals, emergency medical service workers, warming centers and to residents of low-income housing. Some of the restaurants were without power but owners cooked on gas stoves.  

“Emergency room doctors contacted me and said they haven’t had food in 24 hours,” Ko said. “We had so many individuals who were willing to open up their wallets to feed our hospitals. Because we were individuals verses some of these bigger corporations, we were able to spring into action within an hour.”

Pete's Tortillas was one of the first restaurants that could help prepare meals. 

“That was our first community meal,” Ko said. “We passed out 300 meals. I wasn’t able to get there because I was stranded, but the owner afterward told me people were crying and depressed and you don’t know much it meant to them to get a hot meal.”

The campaign helped not only the people who received the meals and the restaurants, but the restaurant workers, Ko said.

“If the restaurants aren’t open, they can’t pay their staff,” she said. “By doing this fund we bought meals from the restaurants so that they can open, they can have staff come in, they could pay their staff, and we can give meals to the community.”