Chef Gary Receives Community Champion Award from Restaurant Association

November 7, 2024

Chef Gary Receives Community Champion Award from Restaurant Association

WASHINGTON D.C. – Chef Gary LeBlanc was honored with one of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation’s Restaurant Advance Leadership Awards.

Named the program’s 2024 Community Champion, Mercy Chefs was recognized for serving—with the help of 15,000 volunteers—more than 28 million hot, restaurant-quality meals to victims, first responders and volunteers in disaster zones across the nation and worldwide.

Sponsored by American Express, the award paid tribute to Mercy Chefs’ impact on the community, its charitable efforts, and the support it’s provided during natural disasters and crises.

You can read about the award from the National Restaurant Association, here.

ABOUT MERCY CHEFS  

Mercy Chefs is a 501c3 founded in 2006 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The organization exists to provide professionally prepared, restaurant-quality meals to victims, volunteers, and first responders in natural disasters and national emergencies and partners with existing ministries with food service in underserved communities around the country. Since its founding, Mercy Chefs has served 28 million meals. In 2020, Mercy Chefs founder Gary LeBlanc was recognized by Southern Living Magazine as a “Hometown Hero,” and Mercy Chefs was named the 2020 Small Business of the Year in the nonprofit category by Inside Business and the Hampton Roads Chamber. Mercy Chefs also has been featured in major news outlets such as CNN, Fox News, NBC News, PBS and ABC News. For more information, visit mercychefs.com.

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