East Cooper Meals on Wheels

East Cooper Meals on Wheels

>> throughout is this period, retailers have been doing their part to ensure the safety of their customer's health, like wiping down baskets and had limiting the number of people who can be in a store at the same time, and other essentials but food brought to them.

That's why the east cooper meals on wheels is ensuring that they're not forgotten.

And joining us is george roberts, president and ceo of east scooper meals on wheels.

Sir, thank you for joining us and i want to know if anything has changed because of our quarantine, and covid-19.

>> not quite sure where to start with all of the changes.

As we were doing our operations this past week, all new cleaning and processes and things like that.

And then we have made preparations for this past tuesday when we had to suspend our operations, we basically cleaned out our freezers and sent out 3,000 meals this past tuesday to provide our recipients with about a two-week supply.

So we can minimize procedures for our volunteers and staff, and most importantly for our recipients.

Homebound and elderly, a vulnerable population, and they have already been in quarantine like many of us now, and we don't want to introduce anything with them.

>> it sounds like your job, which is tireless, has not topped and it has become each more essential and important in these times.

>> yes, we suspended operations but staff is all working from home.

And they have their laptops with them.

And all of our systems are online, so we're kind of lucky to be in this day and age where we can operate and like on skype for this interview.

We're in the process of making preparations to come back on april 6th.

And item not certain, but we'll probably be coming back for another day where we send out frozen meals to evaluate things from there, so working with our suppliers to make those arrangements made and line up the volunteers, and for the volunteers, it has been more than a meal.

A big part of that has been checking in on the recipients and they're face-to-face, and at this time, they're following up by phone, making sure that they don't need anything, and kind of life as usual, but doing it by phone now.

>> as far as the supply chain is concerned, do you have anything that you needs to make these weekly drop-offs?

>> yes, we're in the process of working with our suppliers now, senior catering and the local food bank write is where we purchase the meals from.

So we're working with them for arraignments because everybody is in a partial mode right now, so leading up to apriapril 6th, and making sure that we have our resources lined up with volunteers and financially, we pay about $3 a meal.

And we send out 3,000 meals on tuesday, so $9,000 went out and we're looking at $3,000 for meals going out on the 6th.

>> is there anything that people watching this interview can do to chip in?

>> like most non-profits, be financial support is big, and especially now, the largest fundraising event of the year was april 1st, and like a lot of non-profits, we have had to postpone to, so for us and a lot of charities, it's tough financially.

So anything that they can do financially, and likewise, we're here to support people.

If they are newly quarantined, if they have been exposed to the virus, if they contact us today, they will have meals tomorrow.

>> and it's not justed the elderly that you deliver meals to, but anybody getting themselves to a store to supply food ad nourishment.

We want to thank you for the work that you do, and of course we'll put that information out there to anybody watching this and interested in helping the cause.

Thank you so much, george, and we hope