Catering company focuses on feeding unsung front line heroes: daycare providers

Everyone wants healthcare workers to be focused on treating patients, not having to worry about the more mundane facets of life, like packing or ordering lunch. That’s why many restaurants in the metro area have stepped up to deliver meals to hospitals and clinics.

One Olathe catering company is taking it a step further. Mr. Bevis BBQ has delivered hundreds of meals to four metro hospitals: North Kansas City Hospital, Overland Park Regional Medical Center, Olathe Medical Center and the University of Kansas Health System. Now, they’re looking to support those who make it possible for doctors, nurses and others to be at work — daycare providers.

“One thing we didn’t know is (for example), Advent Health — they have a daycare with 100 employees, and that daycare watches primarily people who work at Advent Health’s kids,” said Jon Poteet, co-owner of the company.

Nurse practitioner Ali Delich and her colleague, Shannon Anderson, gave Poteet the idea after Delich saw Facebook posts about the Mr. Bevis meal deliveries. She’s been working full time through the crisis and is thankful that her kids can still go to their daycare at Prince of Peace Early Education in Olathe.

“I felt like the daycare providers hadn’t gotten a lot of recognition as far as being front line and essential,” she said.

Delich, who works for an Olathe Health System clinic in Spring Hill, reached out to fellow nurses in the Kansas City area to find out what daycare providers they were using, then contacted the places to see if they might be interested in a meal delivery.

Initially, the plan was to deliver 200 meals, but when Delich found there were 266 workers at 12 day cares that could use a meal delivery, she and Poteet didn’t say no — they just found another sponsor to cover it.

“This whole thing is weird. It’s almost like you’re in a McDonald’s line, and someone paid for an order, and it just kept going. It’s cool — it surprised us,” Poteet said.

Initially, the monetary support for delivering any meals started with $1,900 from Mr. Bevis BBQ with $1,195 from a GoFundMe page. Very quickly, though, Poteet started hearing from corporate donors who wanted to help.

Those who have contributed so far include Allied Construction, KB Concrete and HD Architecture. Many of them have worked on hospital projects and wanted to give back. Poteet said he’s had some anonymous donations from individuals as well.

“What they’ve been doing is paying for cost of food. We get it cooked, packaged and delivered,” Poteet said.

He’s had help with the latter from Jered Jerome, owner of Easy Peasy Moving Company, who offered his services to transport the food. Jerome recently delivered 400 meals to North Kansas City Hospital.

Normally, Poteet caters big events, so switching to an individually packaged model has been an adjustment. In a normal time, he’d have part-time workers helping serve the food. These days, it’s just Poteet and his business partner, Brian Lunbeck, cooking and packing the meals.

“As a catering company, we’d normally serve buffet-style. You can’t do that. You want to touch as little as possible,” Poteet said.

Each box contains a smoked turkey sandwich, chips, a fruit cup and a cookie, along with cutlery and condiments. Most hospitals want each item packed and sealed as much as possible.

Poteet has worked with the various hospitals’ public relations teams to coordinate their deliveries to the need. He even split his delivery to Overland Park Regional into two to accommodate both the day and night shifts.

By April 22, Poteet estimated that Mr. Bevis BBQ had delivered about 1,200 meals around the metro area.

This story was originally published May 5, 2020 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Catering company focuses on feeding unsung front line heroes: daycare providers."