Giving Compass' Take:

• Maggie Hennessy from The Counter discusses how meal kits have made a huge comeback during the coronavirus pandemic, and begs the question if their survival will last once things have subsided. 

• How can donors help fund and draw attention to innovative food systems like meal kits? How has the food system been impacted by COVID-19 in other ways as well?

• Here's how nutrition directors are reimagining school meals in the time of coronavirus. 

Chicago whole-animal restaurant Frontier, which used to be a 130-seat, two-story restaurant, looks more like an oversized take-out operation these days. Stacks of carryout containers line the handsome bar, and a central row of dining room tables acts as a makeshift assembly line for filling meal kit orders, along with about 1,000 weekly meal donations distributed to community organizations.

Meal kits began as a desperation move. When Illinois’s governor issued a statewide stay-at-home order on March 15 to curb the spread of Covid-19, executive chef and partner Brian Jupiter had to hustle to come up with a survival strategy; his ten-year-old place didn’t do take-out. Three days later, Frontier rolled out a to-go menu alongside a weekly series of family meal kits, like whole-smoked chicken and pulled pork sliders, priced at $44 for four people.

“We started putting together all these little packages and wanted to make them reasonable and creative, staying in the wheelhouse of smoking meats and group dining,” said Jupiter, whose Pioneer Tavern Group runs four Chicago restaurants and bars.

The kits took off, partly because they held up better than competing take-out offerings that couldn’t survive a 40-minute drive in a moisture-beaded takeout box. Since then, Frontier and its New Orleans-inspired sibling restaurant Ina Mae Tavern (which had a to-go business pre-Covid) rolled out kits featuring Jupiter’s gumbo ya-ya and chicken and biscuits, pairing some with live virtual cooking classes.

Right now, the kits are lifesavers for full-service restaurants that have seen an 80 percent decline in traffic, according to April data from NPD Group, a market analyst: Jupiter’s kits represented 70 percent of Frontier’s weekly sales in early June, and the two restaurants have hired back almost 40 staff members, without having to use the Paycheck Protection Program funds he received.

Read the full article about meal kits by Maggie Hennessy at The Counter.