Restaurants forced to close their dining rooms as the nation grapples with a growing pandemic are putting their resources towards health care workers. 

Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman told Cheddar Monday the company is partnering with José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen (WCK) to service more than 100,000 free meals for frontline workers at hospitals.  

Andrés’s nonprofit organization has been known for setting up field kitchens and keeping people fed following disasters around the globe. 

Neman said Sweetgreen was able to use its existing delivery and Outpost programs to facilitate contactless delivery and pickup for customers.

After thinking about how to “use Sweetgreen to be a force for good,” Neman said the company utilized those programs to launch Impact Outpost two weeks ago to deliver free meals to hospital workers and medical personnel.

Initially, the fast-casual company donated more than 10,000 free meals, but that effort evolved into the “Sweetgreen Impact Outpost Fund,” in partnership with Andrés’s nonprofit, to raise funds and awareness on a larger scale

“Our teams worked 24 hours a day over the past few weeks just to re-route our whole business to a digital-only business that operates in a completely different way, from a safety perspective, and then also be able to redirect all of these routes into hospitals,” he said. “By the end of this week, we’ll be live in over 100 hospitals.”

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