We moved to Redmond in 2010 and we love our Eastside and Seattle community. When we started Off the Vine Catering, one of our goals was to find a way to give back to the community. Fresh, scratch made food is one of the best ways for people to feel connected, and we want everyone we feed to feel as connected to the Eastside and Seattle areas as we do. To that end, we work with multiple organizations, regularly donating meals to groups that include the homeless and the disadvantaged, as well as emergency responders and healthcare service providers.
Shortly after we opened our doors, we were fortunate to come across Friends of Youth. Since the summer of 2014, we have been providing dinner multiple times a month for 30 young adults, aged 18-24, who spend the night at the Landing. One great aspect of working with Friends of Youth is that instead of just dropping the food off at the shelter, we are able to stay and serve dinner. This gives us a chance to interact with the young adults, to see how they are doing, lend an ear, and celebrate their accomplishments.
In early 2020, the COVID crisis hit, resulting in stay-at-home orders and an economic shutdown. We knew that there would be groups in the Seattle and Eastside areas that would be hit harder by the effects of the shutdown, so we reached out to Compass Housing Alliance to see how we could help. They put us in touch with their Cascade Women’s Program, which provides a safe place to live for homeless women in Seattle. We provide 30 warm meals and 30 grab-n-go brunch boxes, to the women in the program every week and will continue to do so even after the crisis subsides.
In addition to the disadvantaged population of the area, we wanted to make sure that emergency responders and healthcare workers knew they were appreciated during the COVID crisis. Working with the EvergreenHealth Foundation, we began providing weekly dinners to the Emergency Department staff at Evergreen Healthcare in Redmond in March of 2020. We hope to continue donating for as long as the crisis lasts, to help make sure the staff knows how much they mean to our community.
In addition to our regular outreach, we often work with other programs in need. We have worked with Hopelink’s transitional housing program, Lake Washington United Methodist Church’s Car Camper Program in Kirkland, as well as many others, and we are always looking for more ways to help. Please reach out if you know of, or are part of, any local programs that could use our help – we would love to see what we can do.