21 Club Donates 1,000 Pounds of Food to City Harvest
By Sherry Li 
August 27, 2010 
8 Comments
I rarely think about donating to a charity right before I leave on vacation. I mean, between packing and trying to find my misplaced passport, I’m up all night until the minute before my flight. But for New York’s 21 Club restaurant and Executive Chef John Greeley, vacation means being generous.
On August 16th, 21 Club closed down for a 3-week summer hiatus. But before the staff went off to sandy beaches, they packed up over 1,000 pounds of food and donated it all to City Harvest, the world’s first food rescue organization, based in New York. For more than 25 years, City Harvest has been committed to feeding hungry New Yorkers, young and old. This year, City Harvest will rescue over 28 million pounds of food and will feed over 260,000 people each week!
This isn’t the first time that 21 Club has made such a generous donation to City Harvest. Appetite for Good got a few minutes of Chef Greeley’s time to talk about this remarkable food rescue. Having worked with City Harvest for over 10 years, Chef Greeley is a big supporter of its hunger programs especially because City Harvest helps feed more than 75,000 hungry children every week.
Other than City Harvest, 21 Club is also a big supporter of other great causes, including Citymeals-on-Wheels, Doctor’s Without Borders, and New York Historical Society, as well as Food Bank for NYC and Share Our Strength during this year’s Food and Wine Festival. As if that isn’t enough already, Chef Greeley spoke enthusiastically about wanting to expand 21 Club’s charitable giving to external events. How generous! Ladies and gents, start reserving your tickets to City Harvest’s Bid Against Hunger now! We might just sample something delicious from 21 Club!
Appetite for Good Interview with Executive Chef John Greeley
It’s great that 21 Club donated over 1,000 pounds of food to City Harvest. Can you tell us more about this rescue?
Every year, we will donate a really large a mount of food. Because we close for vacation in the summer. And we want to make good use of the food. We can freeze it or eat it ourselves but it’s better to just donate it. We’ve been doing this with City Harvest for a while. My personal thing that I get out of it: City Harvest deals with children as well. Usually people think food bank things go to homeless shelters. But unfortunately there are a lot of young children who don’t get enough food to eat, and City Harvest is a champion of that. And I have 2 children myself so I look for that. Children can’t help themselves. We’re a large operation, and when we close for vacation, we usually close for 2-3 weeks. We’re a large restaurant so it’s a vast amount of food, quality vegetables. It’s great for them, for City Harvest. Normally they go to a restaurant, they get smaller pickups. So it’s great for them to come do a one-stop.
How long have you been working with City Harvest? How did you first get involved?
I’ve been involved for over 10 years now. I heard through word of mouth through other chefs. I had product that needed to be donated. That’s how I came across them. They’re really easy to work with. We just have to package it up and they come pick it up. We don’t have to travel anywhere to bring it. They’re really simple to work with. Can’t get easier than that.
Do you contribute to City Harvest besides donating food before your summer hiatus?
We will donate small amounts of stuff here and there. We’ll do that occasionally throughout the year.
What other organizations or causes do you support?
At the restaurant, we do various things. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, they have the senior citizen Thanksgiving dinner. And we actually cook all of the dinner and send it over. About 80 people. We’ll do a full Thanksgiving spread for them. They’re a neighbor of ours in midtown so it’s great to work with them.
We do a lot of events in house, since it is a large restaurant. What we started to do is to donate space to different charitable organizations that need space for events. Doctors Without Borders, New York Historical Society. We did a tasting dinner that was auctioned off for Citymeal-on-Wheels.
We try to do a lot of stuff in house. We’re trying to get more involved with outside venues, where we actually go somewhere. That’s probably the next step on my radar. The fall to winter, though, is very difficult for us to get out of the restaurant because we’re so busy.
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Wow, that’s really generous of them. If you think about it, it makes total sense. I wish more restaurants that close for a break during the year would do the same!!
Yup!!
This is wonderful! Thanks for sharing such a positive example.
Thanks for reading! Please spread the good will
Great post! I love stories like this!
Thank you! It’s very inspiring and heartwarming, isn’t it?
21 Club is offering its first group buying discount wth Zagat and Dealon – http://www.dealon.com – choose NYC (we bought 4!)
Yes! I heard about that! Hope you enjoy!!