By Lisa Kava

In the wake of Covid-19 where New York City has fast become an epicenter, one Upper West Side family is hard at work feeding frontline medical workers, in an effort to help the heroes and save the family business.

Luca Di Pietro, long-time Upper West Side resident and owner of Tarallucci e Vino, a popular neighborhood spot on Columbus Avenue at 83rd Street, established Feed the Frontlines NYC almost overnight along with his wife Kate, and college-aged children Isabella and Ian.

The organization delivers fresh, delicious and free meals directly to NYC hospital workers. Friends, neighbors and anyone who wants to help can log onto the site and click “Buy Meals.” The donations enable Di Pietro’s team at Tarallucci e Vino to cook, organize, package and deliver the meals to the hospitals.

The idea behind Feed the Frontlines NYC was planted by Adair Roberts of Toronto, a close friend of Kate Di Pietro who wanted to help both the restaurant and the medical workers. The Feed the Frontlines NYC website (www.feedthefrontlinesnyc.org), designed by Isabella Di Pietro, was launched on Saturday March 21st. By Sunday, March 29th, the organization had delivered 4,750 free meals to hospital workers throughout NYC, including NYU Langone, Mt Sinai (Main and West,) NY Presbyterian Weil Cornell, Bellevue, as well as The New Jewish Home for the Elderly.

Di Pietro had been forced to lay off 95 employees after Mayor de Blasio’s March 16th announcement that all NYC restaurants would be limited to takeout and delivery. At the time Di Pietro experimented with creative ideas to keep his business running (he owns four other Taralluci e Vino’s throughout Manhattan.) Since establishing Feed the Frontlines NYC, Di Pietro has hired back 27 employees as kitchen workers, catering managers and front-of-house personnel. Rehired workers are also packaging the food and helping with deliveries.

The entire Di Pietro family is involved in Feed the Frontlines NYC, each in a different role. Isabella, a senior at Harvard, answers the phone and emails and is in charge of the website and all social media. Ian, a freshman at Williams College, is monitoring emails, tracking purchases and meals delivered, and taking care of spreadsheets. Kate is busy with partnership and supporter requests and helping friends set up Feed the Frontlines organizations in other cities (Boston, Toronto and Marin County, California.)  Both Kate and Luca Di Pietro personally deliver meals to NYC hospital workers daily.

“This is definitely a family effort” said Di Pietro. “It means a great deal to all of us to see the outpouring of support from customers, friends, family and strangers, and to experience how grateful the health care workers are each time we make a delivery.”

Di Pietro is in conversations with other NYC restaurants in order to collaborate. So far he is working with Mesa Coyoacan, a Mexican restaurant in Williamsburg, which delivered 40 dinners to Elmhurst Hospital. “If enough people buy more meals, I want to bring back all my workers and bring other restaurants into this.”

For Isabella and Ian Di Pietro who found themselves abruptly and unexpectedly home from college mid semester finishing their school year with online classes, the opportunity to help both the medical workers and their family business has been particularly meaningful.

“So many of us are stuck at home right now, feeling anxious and helpless, and this is a way to make a real impact” said Isabella. “When I started telling my friends about the idea for Feed the Frontlines everyone asked how they could help. My talented friend Edith Herwitz helped build the website overnight. As soon as the website went live people started buying meals.”

“Like many college students I suddenly found myself at home last week with a lot of time on my hands. At least now I get to help my family out and contribute to this great effort,” said Ian.

The Di Pietro’s have lived in their current apartment on the Upper West Side for over 20 years. When they were first married, Luca and Kate Di Pietro lived right around the corner from where Tarallucci e Vino is now.

“Tarallucci e Vino, like many NYC restaurants, faces an existential threat. And so Feed the Frontlines NYC was born out of necessity” said Kate Di Pietro. “But it was also born out of generosity. If we go down we will go down cooking, cooking for the health care professionals working hard, night and day, to save the lives of the people in our community.”

For more information and to help by purchasing meals for hospital workers  go to www.feedthefrontlinesnyc.org, @feedthefrontlines on Instagram, or @feedthefrontnyc on twitter.