Following Hurricane Harvey’s hit to our state, Plano citizens rose to the occasion to help in any way possible. More than 500 volunteers joined together to do just that at TangoTab’s Feed the City event in September. People of all ages came to Gordon Biersch at The Shops at Legacy to help feed the hungry.
Feed the City launched in 2015 in Dallas. Over the past two and a half years, these monthly events have expanded to four states and 13 different host cities including the Plano event, which is organized in part by the nonprofit organization Volunteer North Dallas. And even though different communities are pitching in, they all have one purpose: making meals for those who struggle with food insecurity. TangoTab, the mobile app company behind the event, invites anyone old enough to assemble a sandwich to show up and be a part of something bigger than themselves.
At the September Feed the City event in Plano, locals from different walks of life showed up with bags of food in hand, pushed tables together and got to work creating sandwiches. While the monthly Plano gatherings are always popular, this particular post-hurricane event brought together so many helping hands that it had to expand outside of Gordon Biersch onto neighboring restaurants’ patios. After checking in, volunteers formed their own teams, with a few “runners” carrying sandwich supplies out and completed sandwiches back in. Altogether this big group worked to make more than 14,000 sandwiches in about two hours.
The guys in charge are sandwich pros, with not only tips on how to produce the highest quality sandwich (the mustard should not touch the bread in order to keep the sandwich from getting soggy) but also with a world record that proves their ability to produce the highest quantity of meals. In 2016 TangoTab and 2,586 of its closest friends came together in Dallas to snag the Guinness World Record for the “most people making sandwiches simultaneously.”
And these gatherings go toward a great cause with SoupMobile distributing the sandwiches to needy locations. After this particular sandwich-making session wrapped, SoupMobile drove the day’s creations to Houston to provide meals to Hurricane Harvey’s victims. For some, it would be the only meal they consumed that day.
“People see the stuff that’s happening and [they] want to come out and roll up their sleeves,” said TangoTab’s director of social change, Nick Marino, Jr.
Aside from Feed the City, TangoTab helps fight hunger through its mobile app. The company hit the ground running in 2012 with a mission to get closer to ending hunger with the help of technology. The app, which is free, lets users check in at participating restaurants. TangoTab then takes a portion of the revenue received from that restaurant and donates it to a local food charity like North Texas Food Bank. So when using the mobile app at favorite places like Urban Crust, Starbucks and El Fenix, feel good about supporting the community.
“Meals only last a certain amount of time,” Nick said. “Monetary donations can get them fresh meals.”
Whether users download the app or check out a future Feed the City event, TangoTab makes it a little easier to help those less fortunate. As Nick said, “There are good people all over the world and sometimes they need help making that extra step.”
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