KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Black Sheep on 39th Street has been through a lot of changes over the past couple of weeks. The restaurant had to close its dining room and move to a curb-side pick up model.
Now, the locally-owned restaurant is transforming yet again to become a community kitchen.
"I think it would be easier to say what has been the same," chef and owner Michael Foust said. "Because everything is different."
Instead of its traditional service and menu, Black Sheep will offer a boxed meal consisting of tomato soup, microgreens, grilled cheese and a cookie. The meals will be provided by curb-side pickup or delivered to a centralized place, like a community center. People can take what they need and pay what they can. Whatever money is collected will go toward buying more food to give meals away.
The idea was inspired by what the Reiger announced last week.
"I feel responsible to help my community feed people," Foust said. "I know I have a skill set of changing product from raw to cooked or raw to be eaten. I want to utilize this skill set to help. I know there are stresses in this system in the food and how can we get that to people? That’s what we’re looking at – how can we help?"
Although Foust had to lay off his restaurant staff last week, he still has employees who are working on "donated hours" so they can help him feed the community.
"To think of people donating their hours to feed people, on our behalf, I don’t have the words," Foust said.
Black Sheep is asking anyone who would like to help, to donate to a Paypal account the restaurant has created. All of the money will go toward paying for meals to give to others.
Foust also created a Venmo account to help support his staff.
