Mario Batali Encourages Foodies to Use Feedie App to Donate Meals
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Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Chef Mario Batali, with 23 restaurants and six television shows, is known for his trademark humor, his vest and those orange Crocs.
“Orange is the color of the Batali family,” he told ABC News. “It’s Fashion Week in New York now. I usually take a beating from the fashion blogs.”
These days, though, the Chew television personality has one wish for his fans and guests to his eateries: When snapping pictures of meals, Batali wants foodies to choose a new, free app called Feedie.
Here’s how it works: Post an image of your meal at a participating restaurant across the U.S. via Feedie and the restaurant contributes to a non-profit group called the Lunchbox Fund. The fund, which provides meals to orphaned and vulnerable children in South Africa, matches it with a meal at a table a world away.
“The Feedie app is all about the sharing and the joy,” said Batali, a father of two. “There are a lot of people out there taking weird photographs of everything they do and putting them somewhere in the social world. The Feedie app takes our obsession with the delicious and beautiful food that we see in the restaurant and it transforms [it] into a donation to the Lunchbox Fund.”
The Lunchbox Fund, which Batali has been involved with for nearly 10 years, said the app included features such as a map to help users locate restaurants and the ability to share their favorite eateries and meals with other Feedie users, as well as on social media.
Batali said posting pictures of meals is nothing new.
“A lot of people are doing this anyway,” he said. “Hunger is the easiest thing because we already know the answer. … People just have to think about it. … We’re having this delicious food and, while we’re doing that, we’re definitely contributing to something that’s better than us – and that’s serving undernourished, underprivileged children.”
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio