Downtown Tacoma ferries restaurant meals from Pac Ave to front line, on your behalf

A downtown stroll feels different these days.

The bistro lights zigzagging across Pacific Avenue still shine at night, but only a handful of businesses remain open — namely restaurants. Those near the University of Washington Tacoma campus have suffered from the loss of students and faculty, not to mention the lack of museum visitors and waterway enthusiasts.

Enter: Hero Meals.

The concept — similar to individual efforts by other restaurants including Crisp Greens — stemmed from a simple resident request looking for a way to support health care workers as they tackled the coronavirus headfirst. Realizing there was no one-stop-shop mechanism for that kind of system, the Downtown Tacoma Partnership decided to harness its resources to help the public support restaurants and help the restaurants feed others.

“For us, the restaurant and retail sector are a critical part of what makes downtown, downtown,” said executive director David Schroedel. Now in the fifth week of stay-at-home, “There’s a real question of what does it look like, downtown, in the meantime?

“At the end of the day, we want to make sure these restaurants and retailers come out on the other side.”

Since rebranding last year, DTP — as opposed to the generic “Tacoma business improvement area” — has doubled down on marketing efforts to support the businesses in its jurisdiction. Now that theaters and boutiques have been forced to temporarily close and restaurants to flip to takeout-only, the organization has halted its development outreach.

Instead, Schroedel said, “How do we keep things on life support right now until we can bring them back?”

That sentiment led the group to post a list of those that remain open for takeout food or online shopping, which blossomed into the Hero Meals program, launched April 8.

So far, eight businesses have joined: Happy Belly, Pita Pit, Indochine, Thekoi, Stink Cheese & Meat, The Swiss, Zeek’s Pizza and Wooden City.

Customers can visit the partnership’s website and choose a restaurant to send a $25 donation (or more) through PayPal, which sends three meals to health care workers. DTP handles pickup and delivery. You also can call the restaurant directly to make the donation.

Schroedel and retail advocate JD Elquist delivered the first batch of meals April 8. To start, they plan to deliver 100 meals twice a week but hope to increase to four days a week as the idea gains traction. In fact, other community organizations, including Parking Services, likely will join the effort soon.

“They have vehicles and they have an interest,” Schroedel told The News Tribune in a phone call. Plus, he said, they embrace the chance to tell a positive story aside from flagging expired meters.

It took a few days to smooth out the details with restaurants’ schedules, he said, but they all quickly jumped on the idea.

“We are here to support downtown. Using some resources we have to do the back-end piece of it, the goal is to make it easier for everyone else to do what they’re good at already. If we can keep them focused on the food, it’s all the better.”

With the tagline “Be A Hero, Feed A Hero,” DTP will deliver as many meals as people buy and is in the midst of finalizing a large sponsorship to send food en masse.

Schroedel, like most experts, expects a slow build back to normalcy. How will downtown Tacoma, which in the past decade has blossomed into a cultural, entertainment and workplace hub, emerge from this crisis?

“We are going to be resilient, and things are going to come back,” he said, pointing to the Tacoma Creates taxpayer funding as a key pillar to the downtown ecosystem and its future, COVID-19 or not.

“We are waiting for the governor to say, ‘Let’s get back to work.’”

TO DONATE

▪ Visit downtowntacomapartnership.com/hero-meals and select a restaurant.

▪ Every $25 sends three meals to healthcare workers.

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This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 5:15 AM.