Oodles of kindness in warm meals

Oodles of kindness from a local restaurant chain brought warm meals to people staying at the emergency shelter at the Edmonton Convention Centre.

Oodle Noodle founder Son Pham has been making extra noodles and sauces at the northside factory every week since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March. More than 16,400 meals have been donated to shelters in the area including the Bissell Centre, Boyle Street Community Services and WIN House. The convention centre received 700 meals on Wednesday and served them to hungry residents on Friday.

Company president Jay Downton said the retail value of the donation, which was done in partnership with ATB Financial, is estimated to be around $10,000.

“If we loved Edmonton that means we have to take action,” he said. “We're lucky to have some things at our disposal, like a factory.”

The factory is able to make the noodles, sauce and tofu. Downton said everything is prepackaged, which allows for easy transportation and delivery to the various charities.

In addition to food items, the company is also donating 10 per cent of its instore sales to support local charities and recently surpassed $100,000.

Downton said showing this level of support has been great to strengthen the company's brand.

“It's not about making money right now, it's about making sure we have a company coming out of this,” he said. “Our franchisees are our customers, so we had to make sure we took some big steps to show that we are in this with them. It is because of their generosity that we were able to do a lot of these things. We were working in lockstep. We had to go to the franchisees and say ... `Are you comfortable donating 10 per cent of your in-store sales?' ... They unanimously bought into it.”

Downton said although sales have been going down, he has never seen Pham so happy. He said customers were coming into stores to express their gratitude for all the help.

Downton said helping the community also ensured the lights stayed on, as it kept staff busy.

“It was very important to start working and reinforcing our brand with our community (and) to help give our franchisees a chance,” he said. “We're still down (in sales) and that's OK. The lights are staying on, the staff are still employed.”