All restaurateurs are in the business of feeding people, but for Wayne Kostroski, a co-owner of Cuisine Concepts in Edina, Minn., the job doesn’t stop with just his customers. A passionate advocate for ending hunger, he is the founder of Taste of the NFL, which puts on what he calls “the party with a purpose” on the eve of every Super Bowl to raise money for food banks. Each city with an NFL team is represented by a local chef who serves up his or her specialties and a former or current player who signs autographs. Since the first Taste of the NFL in 1992, the event has given away more than $8 million to fight hunger.
Tell me about Taste of the NFL.
The idea was simple: We’ll get a chef from each city and pair them up with a player—current, alumni, Hall of Famer—and we’ll throw a party the night before the Super Bowl, and we’ll give all the money away. If you’re into food, you’re in heaven. If you’re a football fan, you’re in a different heaven because of this range of players. It’s a wide range of opportunities for the guest, and we’ve been very successful in putting on a true Super Bowl-style party. But again it goes back to the only reason we do it, [which] is to sell as many tickets, sell as much in the auction, do everything we can to bring revenue in, pay what bills we need to pay and then give the rest away and start all over again.
Given the current economic environment, was this year’s party any different?
FAST FACTS HOMETOWN: Stevens Point, Wis.JOB: co-owner of Edina, Minn.-based Cuisine Concepts, the parent of Tejas in Edina and Bar Abilene and Franklin Street Bakery in MinneapolisPERSONAL: married; three children
Yes, it was. It was about mid-football season when the true colors of the economic situation started showing up pretty clearly across the country. The Super Bowl was starting to be affected as well. Parties were starting to be canceled, a number of parties were reduced in size. I was asked in mid-November, “Are you still going to go ahead with Taste of the NFL or are you considering canceling?” I said: “I can’t. We won’t cancel this.” This is the most important year for us to put this event on and raise awareness and dollars for hunger because we are in the perfect storm of need for food banks. This was an important year for us. To the credit and tribute to the players and the chefs involved, they really got that this year. They really had the spirit of the event. We turned out better than I expected, though down from previous years.
How can other restaurant companies get involved in their communities?
I don’t think any restaurant should get involved in charitable or community work unless it means something to them.… The spirit of our industry is that we get involved. So, restaurants that have been involved with community activities, keep doing it, because I think the public notices that.
If you want to start getting involved, find something that matters to you. [Our restaurants] have a criteria put together for when we get asked to help a charity. We can’t give to everybody, but if it fits within one to three of these criteria we tend to consider it. First, if it’s related to hunger or childhood nutrition; second, if an employee is actively involved in [the cause]; third, if it happens to be some function that affects that restaurant in that immediate community. We want to support our community.
