Newsom unveils plan to feed seniors.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced what he called a first-in-the-nation program to pay restaurants to deliver meals to the homes of senior citizens during this COVID-19 crisis.

The initiative, “Restaurants Deliver: Home Meals for Seniors,” will operate in partnership with FEMA and California’s counties and cities.

The purpose is two-fold, Newsom said in his daily briefing: Keep seniors and other adults at high risk from COVID-19 well-fed with three nutritious meals a day, and provide economic stimulus to local businesses and their employees. The program will start immediately.

“We’ve been thinking about what more we can do with these extended stay-athome orders and the expectation that even as we begin to toggle back on the stay-at-home orders, that our seniors will continue to be a focus of our energies,” he said, estimating that 1.2 million seniors live alone, isolated and often with no ability to cook for themselves.

On the economic side, Newsom said, “This partnership will allow for the ability for restaurants to start rehiring people or keep people currently employed and start preparing meals — three meals a day, seven days a week —and have those meals delivered to our seniors.”

To be eligible for meals, seniors must have incomes below 600 percent of the federal poverty level and must either be at high-risk of exposure to COVID-19, already impacted or exposed directly to COVID-19, or have compromised immune systems.

Counties will identify those eligible, but prospective participants should call their local 211 line to sign up, Newsom said.

Restaurants will be reimbursed $16 for each breakfast, $17 for each lunch and $28 for each dinner from a combination of FEMA and state funding. Meals must meet nutritional guidelines set forth by the program.

“I keep saying nutrition for a reason,” Newsom explained. “We want to make sure we’re focused on locally produced produce. We want to connect our farms to this effort. We want to focus our values throughout the state of California to get a lot of independent restaurants up and running again as well and have a diversity of options — and make sure that what we’re sending to our seniors is low sodium.”

The state launched a website for the program — https://covid19.ca.gov/ restaurants-deliver-homemeals-for-seniors/ — but as of late Friday, there was no information about how restaurants can register their interest in participating.