Mercy on the Menu

It’s a busy Thursday afternoon at the J&S Hamburg joint in Traverse City, Michigan. It’s December, and the temperature is 37°F, but the faithful are still waiting, inside and out, for their turn to sit down with a plate of J&S’s famous corned beef hash (“with homemade American fries”), or the 4-cheese grilled cheese sandwich, or the half-pound order of beer battered onion rings.

Truth is, the place could use some more tables. And truth is, it has them. But an entire section of the restaurant — the biggest section, in fact — is off-limits this month so the owners can use the space to receive, categorize, wrap, and distribute Christmas presents to needy local families.

“We have no idea how much this probably costs us in missed business,” says Jason McQueer, looking around the room. He shrugs. His wife, Tiffany, seated next to him at an empty table, shrugs, too. They’ve owned the place for 12 years, and sacrificing profits for purpose is nothing new to them.

The toys are from the U.S. Marines’ Toys for Tots charity. The blankets, clothing, and gift cards have been collected by the McQueers themselves through a network of donors, both individual and corporate.

“I guess this year we’ve adopted almost 1,400 families in the area,” says Tiffany. “They’ll be coming in here to pick up the gifts over the next few days, so we want to be ready for them. That’s why we need all these tables.”

Lots of fine, generous couples like the McQueers devote time around the holidays to help people less fortunate than themselves. On the other hand, most emphatically do not do what the McQueers do 12 months a year: Feed thousands of impoverished local children. They call their year-round effort Project Feed the Kids, and over the past five years they have fed almost 500,000 meals to youngsters.

“You should have been in here this morning,” Tiffany tells me. “This place was full of people packing lunch bags: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apple sauce, a bag of chips or pretzels, and juice. Four items in every single bag, about 3,000 bags a week.

“Plus, every Tuesday, a group of 15 kids from a nearby alternative school come in here for two hours to do anything that needs to be done: mopping floors, packing lunches, organizing things. They’re absolutely amazing.”

The delivery system could not be simpler: The McQueers have stationed six refrigerators at various spots in the Traverse City area, which are restocked once a week. Anyone who wants to can open one of those coolers and take out all the food they need, 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a year.

I can’t help but wonder: Don’t they worry about people who can afford food taking advantage of their generosity?

Tiffany and Jason glance at each other and share a little laugh.

“You know, just because someone has a job or a car, that doesn’t mean they don’t need help,” Jason says. “We all know what inflation did to this country since COVID. You can have a $50,000-a-year job, but when your rent and mortgage is $1,500 and you add your car payment and gas and food, making $50,000 can mean you’re barely getting by.

“No, we don’t judge people.”

Suddenly I’m feeling a little judgy, and I’ve always prided myself on not being judgy. So now I’m thinking I’ve misjudged myself.

I hesitate to ask the next question, but I just have to: “Forgive me, please, but you must know that people like you make people like me feel really inadequate. I wish I could do something selfless and life-affirming like this. But I’m not that good.’”

Jason’s answer stuns me.

“Yeah, we see actual hatred towards us for doing this,” he says with a surprisingly matter-of-fact tone. “I can only think it’s because those people are not doing enough for others in their own lives.”

The rap on the McQueers, it appears, is that they’re not trained to run a nonprofit; that they are too indiscriminate in spreading their generosity.

“Those refrigerators are not locked,” says Jason. “Anyone can just grab and go. Some people say that’s being abused. Well, maybe. That’s the business of the people taking the food. They say we waste money. But we don’t pay ourselves. We’re not The Salvation Army or Goodwill, which have paid employees. Everyone knows how we spend our donations, and we let the people out there decide if they need help. Some people just don’t like that.”

Considering that sniping, I’m beginning to worry now that the whole notion of good causes as the sort of things Americans can universally rally around is crumbling. But Tiffany puts me at ease.

“It’s not that they don’t want hungry kids to be fed,” she says. “They would just do it differently.”

 

Like so many good causes, Project Feed the Kids was inspired by personal misfortune.

“When I was a child,” Tiffany says softly, “my family fought food insecurity.”

The family lived in LeRoy, a tiny town south of Cadillac, Michigan. Tiffany’s father died before she was born, leaving a wife and three children. Eventually, another man entered the life of Tiffany’s mother, but she recalls, “He just didn’t possess the right skills to take care of everyone, you know. So, we basically lived off my father’s Social Security survivor payments.

“For 10 years we had no hot water. For 10 years as I was growing up, my mom awoke every morning, boiled a big pot of water on the stove, and carried it to the bathroom so we could take hot baths.”

Still, the pattern of giving that Tiffany embodies as an adult began in the depths of poverty:
“We lived in a house down a quarter-mile driveway, and we’d load vegetables into a wagon and take them to a neighbor’s house.

“My mom taught me: No matter how poor you are, you always have something to give.”

Adding an almost insurmountable burden to Tiffany’s young life: When she was 14, her mother died. The three siblings were separated into different homes.

“I didn’t see my two brothers for a year,” Tiffany recalls.

The words hang like a dark cloud over the restaurant table-turned-gift wrapping surface. From the next room, the riffling sounds of happy diners chatting and chowing down on burgers and fries provide an almost cruel soundtrack.

“I was taken away from everything I’d ever known,” she says, “I started at a new school where I looked like an only child, but I wasn’t. And, for the first time, I realized how very, very poor we’d been all those years.”

You might expect even the most ingrained sense of charity to be shattered by a childhood like Tiffany’s, but she insists the opposite is true.

“It took me awhile to figure out that everything happens for a reason,” she says, “but I know now that Project Feed the Kids is a legacy of my childhood.”

Jason figures it costs about $2 a meal, or $7,500 a week, to run the food program. That kind of expense can really cut into the operating budget of corner burger joint. But Jason and Tiffany manage and run the place on their own, the food program expenses are tax deductible, and most of their six kids are happy to lend a hand in the restaurant, as well.

Besides, Jason admits, most of the volunteers who come to pack lunches stick around to buy breakfast, and he figures publicity for the restaurant’s charitable work boosts annual sales by 20 percent.

“People know they’re helping support the work we do by supporting us,” he says as we make our way toward the bustling restaurant’s front door.

“We don’t know anything about any of the people we help, not even a whole lot about the people who help us. It’s just not a thing. The people who volunteer, the people who need our food, they’re all here regardless of what they believe, spiritually or politically.”

The door opens, and more customers walk in on a cushion of cold air.

“None of that matters,” he says. “It’s just good people doing good things, yeah?”