They came. They loaded. They delivered. Day after day. Hotel after hotel. Box after box after box after box. Approximately 1,200 boxed lunches per day to be exact. Hand loaded. One by one. For four straight days by Food Runners truck driver David and his assistant Kacie. Phew!
Every year, for one week in October,
Oracle World comes to town. Every year, for one week in October, Howard Street, between 3rd and 4th closes down to vehicles. Traffic snarls. Locals fume. Conventioneers, their swag in hand, breeze blithely back and forth between
Moscone North and Moscone South across the thoroughfare in question. Over 45,000 conventioneers attended Oracle World this year. That's over 45,000 folks who eat. Downtown hotels bustled at capacity. Buffet stations brimmed over. Boxed lunches filled the reach-ins. San Francisco's hospitality industry rejoiced. So did Food Runners.
It all began on Monday afternoon and continued throughout the week. The Food Runners truck was prepared. The
Marriott called. Over 400 per day. The
Palace called. Over 150 per day. The
St. Francis called. Another 400 per day. The
Parc 55 called. 100+ per day. The boxed lunches mentioned above, that is. All fresh. All delicious. All rib-stickin'. As always during Oracle World, there was no way for hotel chefs to know in advance how many guests would choose to take the lunches provided or choose to dine at local restaurants instead. Hence the surplus. Pure purgatory for the hotels. Pure gold for Food Runners.
McCall's Catering got in on the act too. Big time. They donated just a few leftovers from that little Oracle Party for 24,000 held on Wednesday night at Treasure Island. The donations included such items as tubs and tubs (the big ones!) of pasta, shrimp, pork, chicken, shredded cabbage, salsa, salad dressing, hot dogs, hot dog buns, quiche, bagels and last but not least, gallons upon gallons of fresh fruit juice. McCall's contributed another large donation on Thursday following a huge Oracle event at Yerba Buena Center.
The Sisters at
Fraternite Notre Dame did the jig when the Food Runners truck pulled up overflowing with McCall's Catering lexans. Craig, a resident at the
Lyric Hotel, left multiple messages thanking Food Runners for the boxed lunches delivered on Tuesday. "Enough for everybody!" he exclaimed. Charlie at
Martin Deporres House of Hospitality grinned as he does every year during Oracle World. For a whole week, it rained excess food in San Francisco. For a whole week, Food Runners made sure that, all over town, agencies feeding the hungry got a piece of the pie. Thanks Oracle World. See ya next year!
Food Runners is proud to announce that Twitter just joined the ranks of Food Runners donors. Twitter is donating on a daily basis. They began last Thursday, October 6, just as Oracle World wound down. Tweet. Tweet. Tweetly-tweet!
