The Aloha Poké restaurant in Valencia collaborates weekly with the #Food4heroes project by donating food to the city’s hospitals
Confined in his native Pedreguer, Jordi Gil, owner of Aloha Poké and Bodega Alenar, both on Calle Martínez Cubells in Valencia, takes the opportunity to carry out procedures and review documents. After a week with the blind down, and after a period of reflection with his team, they decided to reopen their businesses.
For three weeks, Aloha Poké Valencia is collaborating with the #Food4heroes project that serves, free of charge and altruistically, food for professionals working in the Covid-19 health crisis. “After seeing it on social networks, we considered that it was the right time to contribute and help in this situation,” says Jordi.
Every week, Thursday or Friday, Jordi contacts the project coordinator in Valencia, who informs him of the quantity and destination of the menus to be prepared. “That day is a joy. It is almost a service on demand. We usually prepare between 10 and 20 servings, which include rice, quinoa, salmon or tuna, as well as starters and dessert. Sometimes, on the occasion of a birthday, we make some more special poké ”, he explains.
“We feel useful because we are part of the solution. In addition, a link is established with the hospitals and we feed back, because it is a complex situation for everyone, and we help each other”. In this sense, Jordi considers that remaining open “constitutes a guarantee of safety and hygiene, because we are serving health workers”.
‘Healthy life, happy life’
For Jordi, “the distribution is one of Aloha’s strengths, but it was only opened once the restaurant was reconfigured to guarantee the safety of the process. Our quality standards are high, both in product and hygiene, but we have reshaped the process so that riders do not have to enter the restaurant”.
Under the motto ‘Healthy life, happy life’, it proposes a healthy, quality and tasty diet, with fresh and local products. “Enjoy” is the verb that the owner repeats the most. A way of eating that also prevails in the current circumstances.
He acknowledges that “consumption is minimal, either because of fear or because people have time to try things that they did not do before, such as cooking at home“, so staying open “is psychologically hard for the worker, even more so in a sector that makes people enjoy and in this difficult situation it is complicated”.
For this reason, while waiting to recover normality, he affirms that “I like” Aloha Poké’s collaboration with the #Food4heroes project “because we do the right thing and we feel proud”.
