Omni Hotel Donates Their Perishable Foods to The Salvation Army’s Coronavirus Response
Omni Chicago Hotel on Michigan Avenue is usually a bustling hub of vacationers, weddings, and other special events. But, like most hotels in downtown Chicago, it has been forced to shut down for the time being as guest after guest has cancelled reservations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
When the hotel’s executive chef, Dominique Beers, looked at their current inventory of food, she knew she couldn’t just let it go to waste. Instead, she donated it to The Salvation Army, which has been designated by the City of Chicago as the lead agency for mass care in their coronavirus response.
Shortly after her team loaded up a Salvation Army van with five full pallets of food, Dominique took to Instagram to praise her staff, who packed the dairy products, fresh fruits and vegetables, juice, coffee, and tea into boxes for the donation. “This is the best team,” she wrote. “Smiling through it all while also doing good for our community in this time of need.”
The pallets were taken to our Emergency Disaster Services (EDS) warehouse, where they were inventoried and processed by volunteers and Salvation Army staff, including Dan Alvarez, who usually works in the Army’s divisional headquarters. “I needed to do something to help,” he said of his voluntary work reassignment.
After the foods were processed, they were immediately used in meals that were distributed that afternoon at area YMCA shelters. This is what Doing the Most Good looks like during the coronavirus pandemic – donations by generous companies, hard work by selfless volunteers, and logistical coordination by the Army’s EDS team, which has a rich history of responding to crises throughout Chicago, the suburbs, and surrounding communities.
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For tax purposes: The Salvation Army Metropolitan Division EIN is 36-2167910.