A Caterer Turns His Talents To Feeding Hospital Workers

Felipe Avalos traded a career in fashion that took him around the world for a restaurant business that largely kept him centered in Brooklyn, N.Y., and ultimately morphed into Big Love Catering.

Until the pandemic hit, the catering company was in growth mode, feeding the rising number of companies that were making movies and TV shows in New York City.

The coronavirus outbreak changed that almost overnight, hitting the city and shuttering film and television productions along with restaurants, stores and offices. The company went from a job catering about 200 meals a day to nothing, Avalos said.

 “We had catering kitchens full of stock and it was like ‘What do we do?’ We decided we had two options – we were either going to go upstate and ride the pandemic out, or stay here and do something.”

They stayed and the something they’re doing is preparing and delivering hundreds of free plant-based meals to the hospitals where workers are fighting the pandemic on the front lines

Avalos’ wife and business partner, Lena Viddo, has a friend who works at Mt Sinai Hospital, and when the pandemic hit they were talking about the lack of appetizing meal choices for hospital workers and the fact that there’s rarely time to take a proper meal break during their long shifts.

“The places that used to deliver didn’t want to,” Avalos said. “They were relegated to cafeteria style meals like American cheese sandwiches on white bread.”

That led Avalos to make a one-time meal and deliver it to workers at the hospital. Viddo was thinking bigger – she suggested doing a GoFundMe page to raise money to grow the effort. Now, the pair and their 13-year-old son, Valentino, are producing hundreds of meals for workers at Mt. Sinai and Elmhurst Hospital. All of the meals are provided at no charge.

At the same time, Avalos was talking with his friend, vegan activist Ray Ippolito, who convinced him that the project should be plant-based.  

Viddo eats a largely vegetarian diet and the couple has experimented with going vegan for a few months at a time. Their company wasn’t a plant-based catering venture. But the idea of doing nutritious and tasty plant-based meals to cater to health-care workers’ need for meals that feed both body and soul just seemed right, Avalos said.

Now, Big Love Catering is supplying diverse daily meals with donated funds and products, and friends who show up in their cars each day to deliver the food to the front lines.

Avalos is a lifelong foodie who grew up watching his mom and grandmother create in the kitchen and, even in his fashion industry role, he studied global culinary styles during his work travels throughout Europe and Asia.

“Then I had this kind of innate ability to eat something somewhere and come home and recreate it,” he said.

Avalos developed a menu of varied dishes over his years in the restaurant and catering businesses, and now his daily work is recreating them as plant-based dishes without sacrificing any of the flavor or texture.

“I challenged myself, asking ‘How do I take this thing I love to eat that’s not vegan and make it vegan?’ ”

Thank-you notes from doctors and nurses who have enjoyed the meals often ask whether Avalos is sure the food is vegan, a sign he may be opening some hearts and minds to the possibilities of a plant-based diet.

Finding the necessary ingredients for creating the plant-based meals could have been another big challenge as the pandemic seemed to take random bites out of food supply chains in the city.

“I would have had a problem sourcing if I were working from a menu that was repeating something everyday,” he said.

Restaurant Depot, a regular stop for his business, doesn’t sell vegan packaged foods, and Trader Joe’s has limited customers to two of most items, he said, so meals are based on what’s available. Luckily, more ingredients became available when some high-profile plant-based companies got involved.

Ippolito introduced Avalos to Seth Tibbott, the founder and chairman of plant-based meat maker Tofurky. Tibbott has launched a fundraising effort for Big Love on Facebook and the company has donated plant-based meats.

Vegan cheese brands Miyoko’s Creamery and Follow Your Heart have also donated products, Avalos said, and most recently, Juice Generation and New Jersey-based small business Freakin’ Vegan have pledged to supply food and beverages.

Contributions have allowed Avalos to experiment with new dishes. On Saturday, he was making Reuben sandwiches with plant-based meat from Tofurky, and vegan cheese and Vegenaise from Follow Your Heart.

Other dishes have included vegan burritos with saffron rice, beans and vegetables, falafel with a vegan tzatziki sauce, veggie burgers and creamy, cheesy pasta.

Like all small business owners, Avalos hopes the return to some version of normalcy comes sooner rather than later, and he hopes to raise just enough money to provide the free meals in the meantime.

And he’s also seeing how the work he’s doing now could help when his regular business starts to pick back up. The days of big tables of food in chafing dishes where cast and crew members line up to serve themselves are likely over.

Instead, he said, nutritious tasty meals prepackaged by workers wearing the protective gear that’s required in USDA food plants is a more likely scenario.

“I can see my food being prepared in a facility like that, and boxed and sealed and delivered that way.”