Chicago's Meals2Medics is Accepting Art from Around the World to Auction Off to Provide Healthy Meals to Frontline Workers
Tom Kunkel turned his business Urban Pioneer Group’s 1,800 sq. ft. event space into a space where he provides healthy, free food to frontline medical staff and other heroes fighting COVID-19 in the Chicago area. The event space was only created four months ago, but has now become a space for Meals2Medics, which currently provides meals to 15 local hospitals on a weekly basis. The program started six weeks ago and has donated 6,000 meals to date.
Before they began providing food, Kunkel met with different hospitals to find out what meals the staff enjoyed eating. What he discovered was that most healthcare staff don’t have time to eat full meals on their 12-hour shifts, instead they snack multiple times throughout the day. Kunkel took notes and brought them back to his team.
Meals2Medics provides 500 meals to 15 local hospitals on Tuesdays and Fridays. (Picture provided by Meals2Medics)
Meals2Medics serves individual packaged, to-go healthy food options to frontline workers. 500 meals are made on Tuesdays and Fridays and all meals must be at the hospitals by noon.
“We need to start early,” Kunkel said. “There’s about five of us in the kitchen.”
Kunkel only allows his team in the kitchen to prevent the spread of COVID, but allows people to volunteer their time to donate the meals to hospitals.
Since Meals2Medics is ran off of donations and the crisis isn’t ending soon, Kunkel had to get creative when it comes to funding the program. He didn’t plan on continuing the service for this long, but he’s been required and asked by hospitals to keep the service going, so he is.
“It’s not going away as quickly as we thought,” Kunkel said about COVID-19. “We need to adapt to a new normal.”
Frontline workers receiving their healthy meals from Meals2Medics. (Picture provided by Meals2Medics)
To fund Meals2Medics, Kunkel has put out a call to artists around the world to donate their art to be auctioned off online. All proceeds from FineArt4Frontline will go to Meals2Medics’ operations to keep the free meals going.
“This allows for the artists to get exposure for their work,” Kunkel said. “It turns from art to meals, but the art lives on.”
Kunkel only put the call out for artists a few days ago and already has artists from Germany and Japan willing to auction off their art. Whenever a piece is sold, the amount of money the piece brings in will be posted.
All mediums of art are accepted because Kunkel is trying to reach as many people as possible.
Right now, FineArt4Frontline is a tab on Meals2Medics’s website, but Kunkel has plans of creating an entire separate website for the initiative.
Tom (R) and Shiela Kunkel (L) (Picture provided by Tom Kunkel)
Along with these two initiatives, Kunkel and his wife Sheila spend their time running Urban Pioneer Group in Forest Park, which is a platform that repurposes things. According to their site, they craft interiors and furniture from reclaimed timber and products; reclaim age-old recipes and more.
Through reclaiming old items and making them new, Kunkel has found his calling, which has turned into him helping others in a time of crisis.
To donate to Meals2Medics, click here. To donate art to FineArt4Frontline, click here.