Our Social Impact in Numbers
Angels Cafe:
Location: 103 N 7th St, Brooklyn, NY 11249
About: Featured on our Williamsburg Bites tour,Angels Cafe is a mission-driven bagel and coffee shop featuring unique sandwiches, a vegan menu and gluten-free bagels.
In April 2022, Angels Cafe opened its doors to the community. But it’s not just another cafe, there’s something different, and unique, going on there. 40% of their profits go to the North Brooklyn Angels, an organization that has been feeding communities in need since 2017. Also, Angels Cafe created The Breakfast Point, where customers have the opportunity to buy breakfast for someone in need, which they distribute every Tuesday and Friday. Each tour provides a breakfast for someone in need, and 40% of the profits go to North Brooklyn Angels.
As of August 2023, we at Like A Local Tours are proud to have spent $980 to support our part in their mission to create positive change in the community. They take their community outreach and participation very seriously. The staff is very dedicated to promoting the fact that they donate a portion of their proceeds back into the communities they operate out of. It seems to me it’s a place where they don’t just work, but also interact and see to the needs of the surrounding environs.
Eat Offbeat
Location: in Chelsea Market
About: Featured in our Chelsea Market, High Line, and Hudson Yards Food and History tour, Eat Offbeat is a social impact food company whose menus are entirely conceived and prepared by a team of refugees and minority immigrants from around the world who now live in New York City. Eat Offbeat has been bringing the best global home-cooking from around the world (Syria, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar…) to New York, are absolutely committed to incorporating different cultures into the kitchen, promising authentic recipes and a delicious mix of flavors.
During the pandemic, CEO Manal Kahi and her team were forced to rethink, reimagine and relaunch. Almost overnight in March of 2020, they lost 100% of their business as a catering company. “It’s been a really rough year for us,” she says. The team began creating meal kits (available in NYC) and provision gift boxes (available nationwide)
The company hinges on three foundations: “The first is to create quality jobs for talented refugees who want to be in the food industry. The second is to build community and build bridges between us cooking in the kitchen, and our customers having our food at home or at the office,” Kahi explains. “And the third goal for us, ultimately, is about changing the narrative around refugees by showcasing a different and a more positive story.”
As of August 2023, we are proud to have spent $6080 in supporting the immigrants and refugees that make our communities, and reinforcing a positive narrative around refugees.
The Migrant Kitchen
Location: 55 Water St, Brooklyn, NY 11201
About: Featured in our Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn Bridge, and Dumbo tour, they represent a migration of taste and technique from the Middle East to Latin America. Their menu pays homage to the cultural and culinary roots of their founders and is rooted in the belief that food mirrors humanity: creative, collaborative…and a little nonconformist.
In October 2019, two friends—Nas and Dan—teamed up to create The Migrant Kitchen: a long-dreamt-of catering business that focused on providing meaningful opportunities for immigrants to showcase the cuisines and cultures of their home countries while earning more than just minimum wage. In doing so, they had absolutely no idea (like any of us) that COVID-19 was about to turn the world upside down…
Once COVID hit NYC, Nas and Dan quickly pivoted from their standard catering operation to serving food to frontline healthcare workers fighting against the pandemic. As COVID continued to change the way we lived and ate, their operation quickly grew into something much greater.
Within the next few months, TMK was serving over 60,000 meals a week to food insecure communities across NYC. Influenced by cultures and cuisines from across the world, TMK food is cooked with a variety of ingredients, but none more important than purpose…
“We believe, now more than ever, that we have a responsibility to lift-up the most vulnerable members of our communities. In addition to paying all of our workers fair wages, through The Migrant Kitchen Initiative, our foundation, migrants from around the world come together in our kitchens to share their stories and cultures through healthy, delicious meals that are served to food insecure communities in New York City and beyond. ” -TMK team
As of August 2023, at The Migrant Kitchen, we are proud to have spent $440 to do our part in fulfilling the responsibility we share to uplift vulnerable members of our communities.
LES Ecology Center
Location: Union Square W &, E 17th St, New York, NY 10003
About: Featured in our Flatiron Food, History, and Architecture Tour, the LES Ecology Center has pioneered community-based models in urban sustainability since 1987. They provide unique e-waste and composting services, environmental stewardship opportunities, and educational programming to all New Yorkers and visitors who want to learn about environmental issues and take responsibility for creating solutions through action.
When Christine and Clyde met in 1986, they shared a deep passion for the environment and improving the neighborhood where they lived. They launched Outstanding Renewal Enterprises, Inc. in the spring of 1987 to bring a people-powered approach to conservation and sustainable living. They later changed the name of the organization to the Lower East Side Ecology Center to better reflect the work the organization was doing in their neighborhood. But their efforts quickly grew to include more neighborhoods and today the LES Ecology Center (Ecology Center) works citywide.
Over the course of three decades, their Community Compost Program has served as a pioneering model for other groups to start food waste collection programs across the five boroughs and in cities across the nation.
In 2003, the Ecology Center started its Electronic Waste (E-Waste) Program to improve access to responsible disposal of electronic waste. The Ecology Center collects electronics by offering weekend pop-up events in neighborhoods throughout the city.
The Ecology Center started its Environmental Education Program in 2001 and offers robust public programming in East River Park as well as in classrooms in the Lower East Side. The program aims to connect New Yorkers of all ages with the urban environment that surrounds them. The education program offers immersive workshops for students from K-12 at the Learning Center in the Fire Boat House in East River Park year round. Inspired to educate the next generation of young adults about environmental impacts on everyday life, the education program continues to be a high-demand hands-on option for many educators in the city.
As of August 2023, at the LES Ecology Center, we are proud to have spent $300 to do our part in pioneering urban sustainability. Composting is an indigenous idea, people have been composting on the island of Manhattan for hundreds of years. Composting is a great alternative to regular garbage/waste, which produces methane that gets into our atmosphere and hurts our environment.
Mille Nonne
Location: Found in Essex Market
About: Featured in our Immigrant New York food tour, Mille Nonne prides itself in their homemade, sustainable, modern Italian food. They are vegetarian and vegan friendly and cook fresh in small batches daily with a zero-waste approach.
After many years in the restaurant business, Pilar Rigon, Mille Nonne chef and co-founder, felt the need for a new approach to Italian food. Partnering with her husband Bernardo Notargiacomo, they created Mille Nonne (A Thousand Grandmothers), a zero-waste and sustainable concept based on providing happiness through great dishes, with a modern and diverse touch. At Mille Nonne, each ingredient is used at its full extent, while creativity and respect are key.
Amy’s Bread
Location: 672 9th Ave, New York, NY 10036
About: Featured in our Hell’s Kitchen Dessert tour, Amy’s Bread, founded by Amy Scherber, specializes in hand-made, traditional breads as well as sandwiches, breakfast pastries, cookies, bars, and delicious layer cakes
“As good citizens of our community, we feel a responsibility to contribute to its health,” Scherber says. Every day we donate our extra bread to 2 local food pantries and City Harvest (3000 lbs per month gathered from our locations!). They’ve participated in countless local school fund-raisers, hunger-related charities, and community events.