“The brigade is only supposed to make everyone’s life simple, easy, and comfortable. It is neither abusive nor nice; it’s neutral. It is a machine that can put hot, clean, delicious plates in front of the right person in a timely manner. That’s why the brigade was invented and continues to be used today.”

Chef Eric Ripert - October 29, 2015

Chef's Brigade New OrleansChef's Brigade New Orleans

11 DAYS

It took 11 days from conception of the Chef’s Brigade system to delivering the first hot meals to the NOPD’s 3rd District on March 26th.

6 DAYS

It then took less than a week to deploy our 2nd and 3rd brigades to feed first responders, EMS, and healthcare professionals at three separate sites.

Chef's Brigade New OrleansChef's Brigade New Orleans

36 Hours

It now takes 36-hours to build a brigade, fill the roster, and deliver the first hot meals to one of any number of distribution points around New Orleans.

11 DAYS

It took 11 days from conception of the Chef’s Brigade system to delivering the first hot meals to the NOPD’s 3rd District on March 26th.

6 DAYS

It then took less than a week to deploy our 2nd and 3rd brigades to feed first responders, EMS, and healthcare professionals at three separate sites.

36 Hours

It now takes 36-hours to build a brigade, fill the roster, and deliver the first hot meals to one of any number of distribution points around New Orleans.

Utilizing proven solutions from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Great Depression and the Pandemic of 1918, Chef’s Brigade has taken these ideas and built a structure molded by the French Culinary Brigade System and modern technologies to build a true disaster response system.

It is an economic, scalable and long-term solution to feed thousands of people daily, while simultaneously providing a sustainable financial current to New Orleans’ beloved independent restaurant industry and their staff.

Completely scalable to handle any level of our current and future crisis, the Chef’s Brigade system bundles restaurants together into organized units that are each then pointed and engaged with distribution points for the duration.

Utilizing our existing fine dining and independent neighborhood restaurants as distributed kitchens, Chef’s Brigade is harnessing their untapped and massive potential to become a very real force in providing meals during this crisis – a brigade can be pointed at any distribution point around the city, not only first responders and healthcare professionals, but to our neighbors most in need.

This distributed kitchen model fosters social distancing by default and coupled with extremely limited person-to-person interaction through logistics and implementing safety protocols at the on-site distribution points, the brigade system has demonstrated food production bandwidth to handle nearly any situation in our current or future crisis safely.

It is a food machine

Ready to be part of the solution?

If you are a restaurant owner and wish to learn more, follow the link for information.

JOIN THE FIGHT

Understanding that this is a difficult ask of restaurants who have recently experienced a reduction of 90% of their business, Chef’s Brigade directly compensates restaurants and independent chefs involved in the program.

This simultaneous goal provides a new current of financial energy into the entire New Orleans culinary industry to supplement the income of these independent restaurants and their staff subsisting only on take-out business all the way down the food chain to the purveyors, farmers and shrimpers. Further, the brigade system assists restaurants with staff retention, and will allow for an easier industry restart once through the crisis.

This is not a financial panacea for the culinary industry, it is only a tourniquet.