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Atlanta community fridge organization launches its first pet food giveaway
The Humane Society, in partnership with online pet food supplier Chewy, gifted Atlanta mutual aid organization Free99Fridge 25 pallets of cat and dog food to give away to people with pets in need. Free99Fridge founder Latisha Springer and her community fridge volunteers will be hosting the first of several free pet food drives Thursday, June 10, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at 1070 White Street in West End.
To safely store the 30,000 lbs of pet food, the Lee and White complex (home to two community fridges at Best End Brewing) provided Springer with a temporary warehouse space on the property.
“For many pet owners, struggling to feed their family, this includes their pets,” Springer tells Eater of the pet food drive. “We often have people coming to our fridges just looking for something their pet can eat.”
Springer launched the grassroots community fridge organization last summer to help combat food insecurity in some of the most vulnerable populations living within the city’s rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. There are now six community fridges throughout Atlanta, each named in honor of a Black man or woman killed by police. Fridges are maintained, managed, and stocked by neighborhood volunteers, local farmers, and businesses and rely on food, hygiene product, and monetary donations from the community to keep refrigerators and pantries stocked.
Decatur Italian restaurant no. 246 is getting an old school, red sauce joint redo
Ford Fry’s decade-old Italian restaurant no. 246 is getting what’s being described as a “mafia”-style redo of its menu. The revamped no. 246 debuts on Tuesday, June 15, with a menu of classic Italian comfort foods paying homage to old school, red sauce joints. The new menu includes dishes like spicy rigatoni vodka, cheesy garlic bread, pizzas, chicken limone, and shrimp scampi. The bar will serve Italian-inspired drinks, such as amaro spritzes and negronis, Italian wines, and after dinner cocktails.
Expect a more dimly-lit dining room with candles on back bars and shelves throughout the restaurant, too, along with white linens and butcher paper topping tables and 1970s tunes playing on the sound system.
In other news...
Atlanta restaurateurs Pinky Cole of Slutty Vegan and Derrick Hayes of Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks are providing 25,000 Black men with life insurance over the next three years. Cole’s Pinky Cole Foundation and Hayes’ David and Derrick Hayes Foundation are teaming up to launch Square 1: The Liife Experience to provide life insurance policies to 25,000 Black men by December 2023. To qualify, individuals must be between the ages of 15 and 45, earn $30,000 or less annually, and not use tobacco. Sign up events take place, Saturday, June 12, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Slutty Vegan on Edgewood Avenue, and Thursday, June 17, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., at Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks downtown. Those who can’t attend can fill out an application online.
Savi Provisions is opening another neighborhood market this fall at the emerging Star Metals complex on Howell Mill Road. This is Savi’s eleventh location in Atlanta, and like its other markets will sell groceries and pantry items, prepared foods, and beer, and wine.
My Abuelas Food and VeganX host Bien Vegano Farmers Market at Second Self Beer Co. on Sunday, June 13, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The market features 60 international and vegan food, arts and crafts, and beauty vendors, along with live music and beer from Second Self.
