THANKS A MILLION: MEALSHARE MARKS MILESTONE BY REACHING COMPLETION OF ‘ROAD TO ONE MILLION’ MEALS CAMPAIGN

Non-Profit Organization Celebrates One Million Meals Provided to Youth In Need Across Canada, 2016 Social Enterprise of the Year Award Win

Mealshare, a national non-profit organization on a mission to end youth hunger, is celebrating the culmination of its ‘Road to One Million’ meals campaign, which counted down to the one-millionth meal the charity has helped serve to youth in need across Canada since its inception in 2013.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson joined Mealshare Co-founder Andrew Hall and Vice President of Business Development Derek Juno at Vancouver’s Café Medina — a Mealshare supporter which just surpassed its 10,000th meal donated — to congratulate the charity for reaching the end of its milestone campaign as well as its recent honour of being named Social Enterprise of the Year in the BC and The North regional category at the 2016 Startup Canada Awards.

Mealshare partners with hundreds of restaurants in eight cities across Canada like Café Medina that support the charity’s ‘buy-one, give-one’ model, allowing guests who order a Mealshare-branded item on the menu to provide a complimentary meal to local youth in need at no extra cost to them. For each featured meal sold, participating restaurants contribute financially to Mealshare, which forwards the funds to its network of partner charities to purchase the groceries and ingredients needed for a meal. The result: buy-one, give-one — a meal for a meal.

To date, 54 participating restaurants across the Lower Mainland have helped provide 217,621 (and counting) of the million meals served through local charities like The Breakfast Club and the Kidsafe Project Society and internationally through Save the Children, with Mealshare recently announcing an additional 14 Vancouver-area restaurants — among them, Ritual, six locations of Sciué and the Fountainhead Pub — will join the growing national Mealshare roster starting Nov. 22.

“We’re thrilled to celebrate a truly significant milestone for Mealshare by reaching our goal of providing one million meals to youth in need across this country,” said Andrew Hall, who co-founded the organization with Jeremy Bryant. “It’s been an amazing journey for all of our staff, supporters and partner restaurants and we’re so proud to be a small part of the solution when it comes to ending youth hunger in Canada.”

Last week, Mealshare team members and supporters also gathered for lunch in Calgary, AB at Blue Star Diner, the first restaurant to sign on as a Mealshare member that has provided about 19,000 of the million meals to date.

ABOUT MEALSHARE | A not-for-profit organization launched in Calgary in 2013, Mealshare partners with restaurants and designated charities in cities across Canada to provide meals for youth in need. For every Mealshare-branded menu item ordered at 54 participating Vancouver restaurants, one complimentary meal will be donated to youth struggling with hunger through Vancouver-based charities Breakfast Club of Canada and KidSafe. Since its inception, Mealshare has served over one million meals to youth in need across Canada.

www.mealshare.ca | Facebook: /MealshareTeam | Twitter: @MealshareTeam | Instagram: @mealshare | #Buy1Give1 #fighthungerwithhunger