Richmond Food Makers Band Together to Feed the Homeless in Church Hill

It’s a cold day to be outdoors, but there’s a line forming beside a tent set up at 18th and East Broad streets. About two dozen people are waiting, and by the end of the hour, 100 people will have been served plates of fried chicken, collards, mac ’n’ cheese and bread pudding garnished with strawberries. There will be nothing left at the bottom of the pans.

Ms. Girlees Restaurant and GFC Catering’s Franklin Crump and his sister, Helen Holmes, served 5,050 meals on Wednesdays last year, in partnership with Tonya Pulliam of Pulliam Consulting Firm’s Unique Resource Center and the Help Somebody program.

Help Somebody, which spearheads the program, was founded by Shawn Minter, co-owner of Shockoe Whiskey & Wine, Loft 17 and the soon-to-open Shockoe Steakhouse. He began the program in 2012 with three friends. “[We] decided to do something about the overwhelming number of individuals that were panhandling for money to buy food on the corner of North 18th and East Broad Streets,” he says. The group went to feeding 10 people in the beginning to feeding 100 to 150 people regardless of the weather.

“One Wednesday afternoon in 2014, Franklin Crump was riding past and noticed what were doing and wanted to be a part,” says Minter. “He informed us that he and his sister had a catering company called GFC Catering and could provide meals at a cheaper rate. We agreed to allow them to do so and partnership was formed.”

Crump and Holmes pay their costs for the feeding program through the sale of Friday box lunches. The two match the boxes one-for-one. Each costs $5.55 and includes choices from a rotating menu that’s sent out in an email each week on Monday. On Fridays, lunches are ready for pickup. You’ll find things such as of meatloaf, potato soup, crab cakes or wings doused in a special barbecue sauce made with Ryco whiskey.

The food for the needy looks a lot like what’s on the menu at Ms. Girlees. “We give them what we eat,” Holmes says. It’s soul food, but in the hands of Crump, a veteran of the Jefferson, the former Indian Fields and several Richmond Restaurant Group restaurants, the classics are given a contemporary spin.

How can a startup restaurant afford to give food away?

“Everything we make, we put back into the business,” Crump says. But for him, everything starts after he and his sister have served food to the homeless that week. The two named their restaurant after their grandmother, and Holmes says, “She would give anybody anything.”

“[We’d ask], ‘Why’re you doing that? We don’t have it!’” Crump interrupts. “But that’s what she did.”

There have been weeks when deliveries were late and the restaurant’s kitchen was mostly bare — bean soups were thrown together with what Crump could find.

The restaurant at 112 N. Fifth St. was a former nightclub — the cavernous space still needs an overhaul and heating it is expensive. But both Crump and Holmes want to move slowly as they open. “We started GFC Catering with 23 bucks,” Crump says. The two borrowed another $100 from their mother and walked around downtown passing out free food to entice customers. It worked. Crump and Holmes got their first catering job.

Ms. Girlees came next. Although lunch is takeout, customers began sitting down anyway and now the place has a thriving buffet brunch scene on Sundays too. By spring, the plan is to open the restaurant full-time. And in mid-April, Crump’s Ryco Wing Sauce should be bottled and ready to sell.

“We’re winning over people one meal at a time,” Crump says.

In the meantime, wine dinners are planned — the next will be in March with chef Jamil Person from the Boathouse at Rocketts Landing and Shoe Crazy Wine based in Chesterfield County. Ms. Girlees holds Art After Dark and private events, and Crump is even thinking about inviting talented nonrestaurant cooks to come in to try their hand at the stove on other evenings when the restaurant isn’t open.

As things get busier, Crump and Holmes still see their meals for the needy as their first priority.

“We feed anybody that’s hungry,” Holmes says.

CLARIFICATION: This story has been clarified and updated with new information from Help Somebody’s founder, Shawn Minter.

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