Nonprofit The Third Meal Teams With Chook Chicken to Help Families in Need Dine with Dignity

Ray Roske first learned of the complexities and shame associated with students who receive federal assistance from his son's former girlfriend, a Denver Public Schools teacher. “More than 80 percent of her first-grade class" was on the National School Lunch Program, recalls Roske, co-founder of The Third Meal, a non-profit that promotes what he calls “dining with dignity."

What he heard inspired him to create a way for a family to walk into a restaurant and receive a healthy meal using just a phone and a simple QR code. “I’ve worked in the tech world for over twenty years,” explains Roske. He also has a history in the nonprofit sector, having previously worked with the city’s homeless population. With his connections and experience, along with his day job at Oracle, Roske was eager to create a platform that made feeding children as easy as pushing a button.

Oracle has "all this technology," he notes. "We work in a whole bunch of different business units, including food and restaurants and automated payment systems. So I came up with this elaborate idea, and we got an estimate on the platform — and it was about $750,000. I thought, ‘Well, that’s probably not going to work.'"

That’s when Steven Leslie Johnson, a long-time motorcycle buddy, introduced Roske to Robert Galofre, who helped create a much simpler version of the platform for around $5,000. To raise the initial capital, Johnson and Roske flipped a few motorcycles.

While the platform was in development, Johnson’s network expanded the Third Meal team. On his video blog, he interviewed BJ Foster, a homeless advocate for Trainer Middle School in Reno, Nevada. “I thought, there’s our connection. We got a school down,” says Roske. Even before the platform launched, Foster agreed to support it.
“Then I [searched] for healthy restaurants and community-minded restaurants,” continues Roske. “Great Full Gardens was the first one that came up in the area. I sent them a pitch letter and they said, ‘We would love to be part of this.’” During the Reno pilot program, Great Full Gardens matched the contributions made by the Third Meal, and gift cards to the restaurant were then given to participating children at the middle school.

While Galofre and the Third Meal founders finished building the platform, Roske shifted the focus to Denver. “When I first went to Oracle's general manager of construction and engineering, who is very passionate about doing good in the world, he said, ‘I don’t know if we could offer to build a platform. But if you get registered as a 501c3, I could help you internally, because once you’re a nonprofit, you could register inside the company for matching donations,'" Roske explains.

Oracle ran its first internal campaign for the Third Meal around Thanksgiving 2021. “We raised from my fellow employees about $12,000 to $13,000,” says Roske. Oracle then matched those contributions.

Many large tech companies use similar community support programs in which employee donations are matched. Roske’s personal relationships spurred other corporations to register with the Third Meal, including Dell, State Farm, Nikon, Intel and Adobe.

While laying the groundwork for funding, the nonprofit also finalized its app, which allows individuals, regardless of employer association, to donate to the cause. It also provides families who are partnered with the Third Meal to access digital gift cards to restaurants, which present as QR codes.

Finding a community-minded restaurant partner in Denver was a critical component to launching in this market. In early 2022, Roske sent several emails to eateries around the city. One responded with enthusiasm: Chook Charcoal Chicken, a Certified B Corp.
“That means we value people and [the] planet as much as we value profit,” says Chook's chief operating officer, Elizabeth Nicholson. “We’ve committed to donating 1 percent of annual sales to local organizations that fall under one of our four pillars of education, health and wellness, food and environment.”

Nicholson was once a schoolteacher herself, and has a background in food policy and school food. Her personal passion and Chook’s stance on corporate social responsibility made the Third Meal a perfect partner. “It’s hard for us to write someone a check and give them straight money,” explains Nicholson. “We’re in the business of feeding people, and it’s how we want to support folks.” The Third Meal’s funding model aligned with that preference — whatever the nonprofit contributes, Chook matches in food value.

“We’re giving people and children the opportunity to come into a restaurant,” says Nicholson. "We’re trying to maintain the privacy of the people. My team doesn’t know who comes in with a Third Meal gift card versus a regular gift card, and that really gives us the opportunity to treat everyone as humans and give them that real experience.”

Currently, the Third Meal is partnered with Paris Elementary School, which is near Chook’s Stanley Marketplace location. The organization is also in talks with Denver Public Schools, which, according to Roske, “has close to 3,000 kids who are houseless — couchsurfing, living in motels, shelters or cars.”

In Reno, the Third Meal has demonstrated its potential. “BJ just came back to us with some numbers. Fifteen of the seventeen kids in the program had drastic improvements in their test scores, especially math, and their attendance went from missing ten days a month down to two or three," Roske says. “Food is a huge deal in every aspect of life, but especially in learning, and especially at a young age.”

The nonprofit hopes to see similar results in Denver, but greater support is essential. “We would love the burden to be spread out amongst a whole group of restaurants across the Denver area,” says Roske. “If we get another company to jump in, and if we get another restaurant to jump in, we could add another 25 or 30 kids.”

“I second Ray’s call to restaurants," says Nicholson, who notes that Chook isn't in all areas of town, "and we’re not the most accessible to every single family. I really think that we would see utilization of the Third Meal increase with more diversity — different types of cuisine and more accessibility.

“The money goes really far and it’s very easy to implement,” she adds. “Most restaurants are the heartbeat of neighborhoods, and the more that they can do to plug in and support, the better off we all are.”

To become a restaurant or corporate partner of the Third Meal, visit its website. Individuals interested in supporting can buy a child a meal via its donation page.