Long Beach staple Lola’s has delivered thousands of meals during the fires—and it showcases much larger concerns

Lola’s relief efforts have led it to become one of Long Beach’s leaders in delivering warm meals countywide. The Long Beach staple that has been serving the community for over 15 years is not only one of the essential cogs for the Bixby Knolls community relief effort, where local advocates, led by Blair Cohn and Shawn Moore, have effectively turns Bixby Knolls into a command center. Additionally, Lola’s owners Luis Navarro and Brenda Rivera have taken their team across the county as a sanctioned operator for the World Central Kitchen.

“We’ve been at it pretty much nonstop since last Thursday,” Luis said. “And we just got called up to be behind the lines in Alta Dena come tomorrow [Tuesday, Jan. 13]. “Some comes out of our pocket. Sometimes it’s at the directive of Blair and Shawn at Bixby Knolls. Sometimes it’s under the order of the World Central Kitchen. We show up where we can and where we’re asked to be.””

Hundreds of meals each day has reached evacuees and first responders thanks to Lola’s involvement in relief efforts.

Lola’s relief efforts have been nonstop since last week: Thursday? 200 meals directly from the team at Lola’s, handed out to fire and police officers at the Rose Bowl. Friday? 400 meals on behalf of World Central Kitchen, famed chef José Andrés’ nonprofit, focuses on ensuring locals in disaster areas continue the ability to work and, therefore, feed the people that need it. (More on that below.) In between? Picking up a hundred sandwiches from Thunderbolt Pizza. Or a few hundred meals from Tony’s Kitchen. And running them up to L.A. as determined by the makeshift command center.

And the ability for Lola’s to do just this isn’t solely because of the power of big nonprofits or the collective efforts of Bixby Knolls. It is also in small things, like the kind offering of Michael Newfeld from Gaslamp.

“Michael called me and humbly admitted that this kind of thing isn’t their strength. But they still wanted to do something,” Luis said. “So he gave us $500 to make more meals… That is the type of effort we need to highlight: Kelly from the farmer’s markets? Dropped off a palette of vegetables that we used for a medley. Long Beach Mushrooms? A few boxes of mushrooms to use in various meals. There’s a lotta people doing genuinely cool, kind things—and not focus on the negative. And we need to make sure our efforts are coordinated.”

The need for a centralized Long Beach space for relief effort communication—and how Bixby Knolls is leading that charge.

There is certainly no question: The entirety of the L.A. landscape has collectively decided this is something we will fight together. Of course, some might say that the outpouring of love has been too kind. Donation efforts have become overwhelming to the extend that they are causing a quagmire in communication and organization efforts.

“There’s no question that the need for things to be streamlined, directed, and efficient needs to be the focus point, especially with efforts here in Long Beach,” Shawn Moore told me when discussing his own efforts to feed first responders and get supplies to evacuees.

And Bixby Knolls is slowly but surely becoming that. In an entirely grassroots undertaking, the neighborhood has become Long Beach’s epicenter as the county unites in relief efforts, largely thanks to Blair, Shawn, and of course, restaurants like Lola’s.

The restaurant industry was called on—yet again—in a time when they’re struggling.

While World Central Kitchen covers the cost of each meal delivered by a sanctioned place like Lola’s, the ultimate reality is that local, county, and statewide leaders still remain largely disconnected from the efforts of the food industry. Even more, federal agencies like FEMA can end up butting heads with local kitchens who know the terrain more efficiently as well as exercising relief efforts in SoCal.

The overall result? A lack of communication between officials and the very food industry they should (and very much do) depend on during crises. Just as restaurants were amping up for Dry January—which refers to both the general halt of alcohol consumption among many as well as the post-holiday spending decline seen annually—

How the World Central Kitchen came to not just Lola’s but Long Beach for relief efforts.

Long Beach was one of the few cities in the United States that participated in a then-newly minted World Central Kitchen program that ensured restaurant workers not only continued to work during COVID but were producing meals for those who needed them most.

Having launched as soon as the coronavirus began to hit global levels and formally active in the city for the past three days, the pilot program here in Long Beach, headed by The Ordinarie and Lola’s Mexican Cuisine, is now responsible for more than 1,000 meals delivered daily to seniors across the Long Beach region.

How was that possible? Michael “Tank” Gonzales. A man who not only has many hats to wear, he is a lawyer and owner-operator of Downtown’s The Raven and The Wolves tattoo studio with Carlos Torres. No stranger to the space where conflict and nutrition collide, Tank was in Puerto Rico when Hurricane Maria struck in 2017, flying himself and two family members there to volunteer. It was in Puerto Rico that he was connected with Chef José Andrés. Tank then joined World Central Kitchen once again in Tijuana to help feed migrants in the caravan of asylum seekers who had trekked from Central America to the U.S. border.

Thanks to his efforts in 2020, Lola’s and The Ordinarie became officially sanctioned by World Central Kitchen, meaning that whenever disaster hits our region, they will be called upon to feed the masses.