A local restaurateur wants to ensure children in the community do not go hungry by providing extra meals for students who need them.
Mucho Burrito has donated 2,100 meals to 16 different schools in York Region, including St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary School in Aurora during the 2023 to 2024 year. They plan to expand their reach and provide meals to seven more schools in the upcoming fall.
“When we first started doing this, I didn’t think it would amount to such a huge volume of numbers,” said Rajal Patel, owner of Mucho Burrito in Upper Canada Mall in Newmarket and East Gwillimbury.
Patel, who has owned the restaurants for one year, reached out to businesses and charities in the area to learn about the community. She supported the Newmarket Food Pantry and local food banks in East Gwillimbury and Holland Landing in the past, which opened her eyes to how many people, especially children, need food.
“It was from them that I realized that regardless of food insecurity being higher overall, it is more significant in terms of kids,” said Patel.
Some schools have taken up her offer to provide food, while others declined as they haven’t worked with her before. Staff at St. Joseph’s were happy for her help.
“Every week she sends a little bag with extras in for no charge and not pre-ordered by parents,” said Hilary McKay, lunch co-ordinator for St. Joseph. “As someone who is in the school, there is always a kid that needs food. There’s always someone who forgot their lunch or something happened.”
Staff at St. Joseph developed a lunch program where they work with different vendors throughout the week for children to receive food. As Mucho Burrito is one of the vendors, Patel would provide more than what she has to, for free, to ensure students have more than enough.
She provides extra quesadillas, burritos, chips, and salsa.
“That is not required or expected by the vendors,” said McKay. “We don’t ask that of them but we do appreciate her because she is filling a need. There is always a need in this school community. My understanding is when I talk to parents of other schools, it’s not just our school, it's other schools.”
Patel said she feels sad hearing stories of children going to school without a lunch, for whatever reason. She feels good to do her part.
“We were doing it to give back to each school,” said Patel. “Every school has different needs. When you speak to different lunch co-ordinators, and listen to the different stories they have with regards to how kids come up and forgot their lunch because their mom forgot bread the other day because their sister is in hospital, it is heartbreaking listening to all of that. You think you want to give something to kids out there.”
While she is relatively new to giving back to schools, she maintains her food is safe and healthy for students. She wants to continue her program.
“Food quality is important, our customer service is extremely important, cleanliness is important,” said Patel. “Having a good staff and training them well to know what our standards are and the support of our head office means a lot.”
