Are charitable food businesses the wave of the future? We see how San Francisco’s Mission Street Food went from taco truck to charitable benefactor in almost no time.
When former Bar Tartine cook Anthony Myint and his wife Karen Leibowitz set out to create a foodie distraction with which to occupy their spare time, they didn’t expect their taco truck sublet to turn into a local phenomenon with national attention. But thanks to their impeccable taste and timing (street food is in!) as well as with the help of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Internet savvy and food-obsessed denizens, their Mission Street Food experiment has since grown into a twice-weekly food event that amasses crowds outside of an otherwise lackluster Chinese restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District.
The success of these nights has also transformed Mission Street Food into a serious charitable business, as more than $17,000 was donated to local charities during the part-time restaurant’s first 10 months of operation. Mission Burger, a lunchtime burger stand that Myint started inside the Duc Loi Supermarket a couple doors down from Mission Street Food, has also generated more than $2,500 in donations during its first three months of operation.
We have our bags packed and ready, but we need a destination.
Is there an individual or organization you know about that’s finding new and innovative ways to create change in your community? If you do, tell us about it, and we may make your nominee the subject of our next video.
The Quotidian is looking to produce original short video documentaries (under 10 minutes) about people doing good for their communities. Subjects can range from an individual taking personal initiative to improve the well-being of homeless people in his neighborhood to a local business that donates a percentage of sales to charity, for example.
Though not a necessary requirement, we’d love to tell stories that are in the development stage – whether it’s someone starting an innovative social program or a nonprofit pushing for widespread community action. We feel that focusing on the development phase of a particular action enables us to not only tell a potentially more captivating story, but a more inspirational one for the budding social entrepreneurs and volunteers of tomorrow. Our videos aim to not only explore the work of a particular individual or organization, but to also demonstrate how we can all participate in doing a world of good.
In particular, we’d love to get out of the social innovation incubation center known as the Bay Area and see how people are doing good in other parts of the country. Is there a grassroots movement to get schoolkids to help green parks?
If you think we’ve been antisocial of late, please don’t take it personally. We try to explain.
There have been some questions about why The Quotidian has been a little quiet lately, and so I wanted to let everyone know about what has been developing in the past few weeks.
I started The Quotidian a few months ago with the purpose of thinking more deeply about how our everyday actions – from buying light bulbs to consuming meat – affect the larger world, and by using essays and commentary to dig deeper than your average blog to contextualize these issues in a fresh way.
It was important that we didn’t just reflect on the issues, however, but to also show what people were trying to do about them, and there seemed no better way to capture how change is happening in our communities than with shortform video documentaries that bring these actions and movements to life.
The hypnotizing power of video is, of course, nothing new and it’s no secret that online video has become an incredibly powerful medium that continues to grow not only in viewership but in quality and distribution opportunities. But with more people watching than ever, are the stories of people creating societal change at the grassroots level being given enough opportunity to be told?
The Quotidian can better fulfill its mission of educating and inspiring people about how any individual can do good for his or her community by focusing on the production of short video documentaries about these efforts.
Back from the desert and now in edit lockdown for our next video on Party Corps – stay tuned for news about its release in the coming weeks. 3 weeks ago
Thanks Tucson for showing me fantastic people doing amazing work, for sharing your inspirational stories – and for free airport wifi. 4 weeks ago
Getting ready to cross the border into Nogales - sort of the Tijuana of the Arizona border. 1 month ago
In Tucson, Arizona, about to make the first trek to the border with the Good Samaritan patrol group. 1 month ago
Going to Tucson, Arizona next week to shoot an experimental doc on migrants crossing the border. What else should we check out down there? 1 month ago
There have been some questions about why The Quotidian has been a little quiet lately, and so I wanted to let everyone know about what has been developing in the past few weeks.
