Frontline health care workers are among the people in the world today doing the most critical, meaningful work. They work long, intense hours and lack the time or outlets to find the food necessary to sustain themselves and keep going.
At the same time, bars and restaurants with razor-thin margins are struggling to survive in this crisis amid closures and limitations to delivery/takeout.
A group of businessmen across the globe saw the chance to connect these two groups and sustain healthcare workers while giving restaurants a chance at a new revenue stream.
In late March, the founders at Mission Watch Company (Toronto) and Old Road BBQ (Nova Scotia) decided to work together to feed frontline workers for the next month in Nova Scotia.
“Around a month ago, my Mission Watch Company co-founder, Peter Carayiannis, and I were on a call with NextLevel co-founder, Matt Salvato. We were telling him about our friend, Aaron Emery, and his Old Road BBQ in Halifax, Canada. In response to the crisis, Aaron wanted to bring meals to hospital workers, so we at Mission Watch Company funded it for a month,” says Aron Solomon, co-founder of Sustain the Line. “So me, Peter, and Matt were discussing whether this idea could scale. We thought it could, so by the same afternoon, I had built a site on Squarespace and we launched on social media. It’s been a whirlwind from there, really. In startup terms, we achieved perfect product-market fit from day one.”
NextLevel (New Jersey), Conduit Law (Toronto), and Aron Brand (Montreal) joined Mission as founding sponsors and decided to immediately expand the idea throughout the US and Canada. The result was the creation of Sustain the Line, a program that matches small food businesses able and willing to deliver meals to frontline healthcare workers with supporters willing to fund these meals. 
Bars and restaurants can get involved in three simple steps:
Sign Up
Interested bars and restaurants can use the contact form or simply email to let the program know they are willing and able to make deliveries to local hospitals.
Supporters willing to pay for meals for frontline healthcare workers should also use this form. Supporters can specify geographical areas they’d like to support or specify multiple areas.
Get Matched
From there, Sustain the Line serves as a matching service to help connect the food providers and supporters. According to the website, “We don’t touch any payment – that’s between the supporter and the food provider. It’s up to the food provider to contact their local hospitals, triage units, etc.”
Pay and Deliver
The supporter contacts the bar/restaurant and arranges payment. Typically, a supporter will provide a lump sum and tell the food provider to provide as many meals as they can for that amount. The bar/restaurant then delivers the meals and confirms with the supporter.
Sustain the Line doesn’t take a cent during this process.
In its first month, the program has provided approximately $100,000 worth of meals to frontline healthcare heroes. The program is expanding across North America each week. Current cities involved in Sustain the Line are: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Cincinnati, Austin, Detroit, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax.
For bars/restaurants interested in implementing Sustain the Line in their area, Solomon encourages them to fill out the contact form. “All we need to launch Sustain the Line in new cities is interest and local media coverage,” he says. “TV, newspapers, and online coverage help things go much faster and brings everyone together.”
Photo: Online Marketing on Unsplash
