Restaurant owner Donnell Singleton delivered fresh vegetables and a chicken and rice dinner to JoAnn Witt in Dorchester in 2020 during the height of the pandemic.
As I try to catch up on articles I saved from before the lockdown and in its early days, I thought you’d be interested to know that the Boston restaurant in this inspiring June 2020 piece was still operating on its community-oriented principles.
Suzanne Kreiter at the Boston Globe wrote the story and took the pictures.
“When the pandemic shut down Boston’s schools in March [2020], Food for the Soul restaurant owner Donnell Singleton made a decision. Working with activist Monica Cannon-Grant of Violence in Boston, Singleton closed his Grove Hall restaurant to customers and turned it into a provider of free meals for the community.
“He thought they would feed a couple hundred people on the first day. Some 850 showed up. The next day, 1,050. On the third day, 1,200 people came for chicken, collard greens, sandwiches, rice, and other fixings.
“Unable to continue safely serving so many people out of the storefront restaurant he opened four years ago on Warren Street, Singleton and Cannon-Grant transitioned the effort to a free community food delivery service. …
“To support the effort, Singleton at first relied on donations. Then Cannon-Grant swung into action. ‘Monica is the queen of grass-roots,’ Singleton said.
“He got a Resiliency Fund grant from the city, as well as money from the Boston Foundation, Nike, and other funders. Singleton couldn’t pay his staff, but they stayed on as volunteers. Through her own fund-raising prowess, Cannon-Grant provided stipends to the restaurant’s staff so they could keep food on their own families’ tables.
Other volunteers from the community, having no job to go to during the pandemic, crammed into his small restaurant to cook, package food, and drive meals to families, many of whom were in need even before COVID-19. …
“Every day, potential customers peer in the windows or ask through the door for Singleton’s soul food, a mouth-watering assortment of chicken (fried, baked, barbecued, smothered, and jerk), fried haddock, beef ribs, brisket, rice and beans, and more. But they have to wait.
“Singleton said he’s not worried about lost business. He said he felt it would be ‘almost disgraceful’ not to have been there for his community.
‘“Sometimes you have to ask yourself what’s important,’ he said.
“Singleton, a 47-year-old father of three, was born and raised in Roxbury. He attended Latin Academy and was the first member of his family to graduate from high school and college, Clark Atlanta University. He has worked as a teacher, often focusing on at-risk youths, and he owns a children’s book publishing company, Origin Nile Publishing.” More at the Boston Globe, here.
From the restaurant’s website: “Food For The Soul is the only location in Boston where you can walk in and find a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, a cop, a fireman, and a school teacher. All of these individuals would be of different ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, socio-economical levels, and educational levels. It is here at Food For The Soul [that] every single one of those people are the same, ‘human beings deserving of and receiving great service, great products, and amazing Food For The Soul.”
Follow the restaurant’s unusual array of community activities on Facebook, here.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
So many people need food! Wonderful how welcoming they are and the diversity of the patrons.
They have their priorities straight.