Darcy King and Filip Rocca, friends and co-owners of Mezzo Ristorante & Lounge in Windsor, Ontario, have known each other for 15 years.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada in March, these two friends, like many other small business owners, had to close their restaurant to comply with government restrictions in order to control the spread of COVID-19. King and Rocca are very close to their community and have always centred their mantra around helping and giving back to those around them. Over the past few years, they have contributed to hundreds of charities – and when COVID-19 put people in their community in need, they decided they could not stand by without action. The two pooled their resources together and started brainstorming ways to become more helpful.

Naturally, as the solution, King and Rocca decided to make free meals for frontline workers in their local hospital. They teamed up with Karl Lovett, CEO of the local International brotherhood of Electrical Workers 773Opens in a new tab. (IBEW) who came forward with open hearts and open wallet- intent on sponsoring a large portion of meals. “We discussed with the IBEW president and he wanted to give back to the community as well,” said Rocca. “They had some funds available and we had the means to prepare the meals – it was the perfect fit.”

Mezzo Ristorante & Lounge had three chefs cooking and three to four daily staff packing meals while always wearing masks and gloves. Due to the strict safety protocols given by Windsor Regional Hospital to protect medical staff and patients, all the meals, including salads, had to be individually wrapped. In total, Mezzo Ristorante’s staff wrapped 12,000 portions, including 6,000 warm meals and 6,000 salads in the month of April alone – that is an average of 3,000 packages a week.

In addition to serving the hospital, Mezzo Ristorante served over 15 nursing homes, some fire stations and EMS stations. “The nursing homes got hit pretty hard with COVID-19,” said Filip. “The nursing home and emergency medical service workers are also critically important and we wanted to ensure we were taking care of as many of these people as possible.”

Thanks to the help from members of the surrounding community, Mezzo Ristorante was able to make their efforts a success. As people heard about what Mezzo Ristorante was doing, more members of the community wanted to get involved. “We got help from local suppliers who provided tomatoes and salad for free from PrimeVine Produce, Champion Paper gave us individual packaging, Post Packaging donated the boxes and customers came out to help us… everyone came together,” said King.

From left to right: Filip Rocca (co-owner, Mezzo Ristorante), Darcy King (co-owner, Mezzo Ristorante), Karl Lovett (CEO, IBEW 773) and Beth Prince (chair of board, Windsor Regional Hospital Foundation)

Rocca, co-owner of Mezzo Ristorante, delivered meals everyday in his INFINITI QX80 to Windsor Regional Hospital, and extra food would go to front desk staff and hotels – where the medical staff were living temporarily. “Some of the hospital’s staff were living at a local hotel to protect their families and to help contain the spread of the virus,” said Darcy King. “We ended up bringing food there twice a week to make sure they were well fed.”

In addition, when Mezzo Ristorante reopened their business for takeout, they decided to donate one dollar for every meal they sold to the local downtown mission. In just one month, they ended up feeding close to 200 people.

On behalf of Nissan Canada and INFINITI of Windsor, we want to give a big “thank you!” to the team at Mezzo Ristorante, IBEW 773, chef Pat Lizzi and team who worked early mornings and late nights to prepare the meals, and to everyone involved in helping the local Windsor community in one way or another.

To learn more about Mezzo Ristorante, can visit their website: https://mezzo.ca/Opens in a new tab.