A handful of food banks and senior centers in San Francisco will soon be handing out some premium cuts of beef, thanks to a donation of 35,000 Waygu steaks — street value: $2 million — from Idaho’s Snake River Farms.
“A friend of a friend mentioned there was this big steak donation that wanted to be made in SF and they didn’t know who to give it to or how to handle it. Because I have a lot of contacts with non-profits and community organizations it all came together,” Kanishka Karunaratne Cheng, who helped connect the donor with the recipients, told ABC. She added that the generous donation of the pricey meat was “so random, so bizarre.”
“I was like, ‘Are you sure? Are we really doing this?’ Turns out yes we are! They showed up today and we are delivering them,” she said.
Snake River Farms typically sells its Waygu to San Francisco’s high-end restaurants, but with many restaurants shuttered due to the pandemic, they decided to donate instead.
“At Snake River Farms we are a family business,” the company said in a statement. “From our ranchers to our distributor partners, we are all in this together. We are firm believers that in times of crisis, food can bring comfort and healing. While we are hundreds of miles away, we care deeply about these restaurant workers, their families, and the affected communities in California that are having a tough time and want them to know how much they mean to us.”
Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.
This article was featured in the InsideHook SF newsletter. Sign up now for more from the Bay Area.
