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Forced to postpone its April opening, the Queens Night Market is pivoting to feed another group of New Yorkers—nurses and doctors.
Twelve of its vendors—Arepalicious, Caribbean Street Eats, Cooking with Corey, Kini, Magnolia Cafe, Two Table Spoons and others—will serve up thousands of ready-to-go, home-cooked meals for workers across the borough's nine acute-care hospitals at 250 meals per hospital.
The program is in partnership with Queens Borough President Sharon Lee and the Queens Economic Development Corporation with the aim of keeping our essential workers fueled as they fight COVID-19 and giving our small businesses a fighting chance.
"While we’re extremely disappointed that we won’t be opening up the Queens Night Market in April this year like originally intended, we’re committed to making a positive impact while we’re all hunkered down during this crisis," said Queens Night Market founder John Wang. "We hope this project can provide some small businesses with a modest but important stream of revenue during these challenging economic times. But most of all, we hope that our collective contributions will be matched by corporations and generous individuals who want to help out those battling this pandemic and caring for those in need on the frontlines."
The meals will be prepared by small businesses either enrolled in QEDC’s innovative Entrepreneur Space (E-Space) commercial kitchen incubator in Long Island City or vendors who participate in the seasonal Queens Night Market in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Many of the meals will be transported to each hospital by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Meals will be packaged individually and can be eaten at any time during a medical worker's shift.
"All across Queens, frontline workers and medical professionals are moving mountains around the clock with extraordinary acts of heroism, using all tools and resources available to save each and every single life," Borough President Lee said. "Queens is deeply grateful, and we know every single minute counts."
Their hope is to raise more funds to expand the initiative. For more information on that, call 718-286-3000 or email info@queensbp.org, with the subject line "Fuel the Frontlines."
If you want to see more New Yorkers showing gratitude to essential workers, watch these videos.