COVID-19: Impacts and Response

How our base of refugee and immigrant chef communities have been impacted by COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic rocked everyone, especially those working in food – with poor and working-class immigrants and communities of color hit hardest. OB’s response and target population span various groups:

  1. OB refugee and immigrant chefs who have engaged it’s incubator program,
  2. the broader community of small immigrant entrepreneurs in Oakland, and
  3. Oakland Chinatown merchants with whom OB has been organizing over the past year

These groups have been impacted in different ways by the pandemic and policy responses to it:

  • Loss or reduction of employment: For workers and chefs who Oakland Bloom supports, shelter-in-place meant loss of employment or drastically reduced hours, resulting in extreme economic hardship.
  • Limited or no access to government benefits: Due to barriers around social support, language access, transportation and immigration status, the people with whom Oakland Bloom works have limited access to stimulus relief, unemployment or other benefits – made more tenuous with Public Charge legislation that punishes immigrants for accessing public benefits and services.
  • Loss of childcare for working chefs: Most of our participants in our program are single mothers with small children. With immense childcare responsibilities and justified concerns around exposing their kids to COVID-19, the shelter-in-place severely limited mobility, access to free food distribution, and paid work.

Our Response

In a collective effort to thoughtfully respond to the COVID-19 crisis and the multitude of barriers our chefs face, Oakland Bloom collaborated with local community partners to assess, strategize, and act to support our base of poor and working class chefs and their communities through mutual aid efforts and initiatives.

Phase I: Assess immediate needs and respond

  • Phone check ins with OB chefs and their families, and communities Relief application support
  • Linkages to accessible direct services and opportunities
  • Financial relief

Phase II: Meet basic needs in a tailored way that is accessible and convenient for chefs

Directly connecting OB chefs to community-based relief efforts for supplies and food security through collaborative programs, partnerships, and initiatives:

  • Farmers to Family Food Box. A free weekly CSA produce box supplied by Gill Tract Farms and delivered directly to our base of refugee chefs and their families
  • North Oakland Mutual Aid. A food and hygiene supplies distribution delivered to OB chefs through our partnership with North Oakland Restorative Justice Council and Eastlake United for Justice.

* NONE of this would be possible without the help from our amazing and generous volunteer drivers. THANK YOU!

Phase III: Pivoting our Open Test Kitchen program to provide economic opportunities for OB chefs during the pandemic when other traditional opportunities are limited.

Our Pay It Forward program enables chefs to cook homestyle meals that go towards neighborhood mutual aid/distribution efforts to feed 500 of our unsheltered neighbors in West and North Oakland.

Building for the future: Understory Kitchen Collective

We launched a worker-led restaurant, shared kitchen collective, and community event space for working class immigrants/ refugees and BIPOC communities called Understory. The space is centered around cooperative values and designed to help businesses adapt, build resilience, and be more agile in an uncertain economy and food market landscape.

Oakland Bloom in the Neighborhood

Due to the threat of displacement and sinophobia, Oakland Chinatown had been feeling the impact from even before COVID-19 arrived. As community stakeholders in Chinatown, our commitment to just and vibrant immigrant communities inspired us to work to combat this. Our work began as a coalition of immigrant merchants and orgs, and pivoted to address immediate COVID-19 concerns.

Oakland Bloom has worked with community partners to support several different initiatives that engage with a larger base of small immigrant businesses in Oakland and Oakland Chinatown in the face of business closures due to COVID-19.

Through Initiatives and partnerships with Good Good Eatz, and EBALDC/ Chinatown Improvement Initiative, we’ve been able to increase visibility for businesses through social media storytelling efforts on the people behind the businesses and help them adapt through to-go models and online platforms.

Thanks to all our partners for your collaboration and support to build connected communities of mutual aid in Oakland: