DC-area restaurant chain offers free Thanksgiving meals for seniors

Citing the calls for smaller holiday gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Medium Rare DC is showing some concern for the elderly by making a generous offer.

Mark Bucher, the owner of the D.C.-area chain, is asking residents to identify people 70 years or older who will be alone for Thanksgiving. The restaurant will visit and deliver them a free meal.

“We felt we had to do it,” Bucher told WTOP.

Given the new rules for smaller holiday gatherings, If you know anyone over 70 that will be alone for Thanksgiving in the DMV area, we will deliver them a free Thanksgiving dinner. Email us name, address and cell phone. Secretsauceme@mediumrarerestaurant.com

— Medium Rare (@MediumRareDC) November 11, 2020

Bucher said they have 5,000 emails, so far, requesting meals and will take time to sort through all the messages to accommodate as many requests as possible.

“We think we’ll ultimately put out about 2,500 (meals) in a day,” Bucher said. “It’s going to be an incredibly massive, herculean effort to do it, but we felt that society needed it.”

The steakhouse has locations in D.C.’s Cleveland Park neighborhood, Bethesda, Maryland, and Arlington, Virginia.

To carry out the good deed, the restaurant will need some help.

“We need donations, and we need drivers,” Bucher said.

“If they want to make a donation, they can email us at Secretsauceme@mediumrarerestaurant.com. If they want to drive, they can email us at the same address and say, ‘I want to drive.'”

The announcement received a lot of social media attention, specifically on Facebook and Twitter. The offer post has been shared or retweeted more than 2,000 times as of Friday night.

Bucher is also collecting funds to provide free lunches to area public schools, recreation centers, fire and EMS facilities and police stations on a GoFundMe page.

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