When ongoing duties in the Middle East keep America’s armed forces from coming home, many companies, including OSI Restaurant Partners LLC, bring home to them.
For the seventh time since 2002, a group of OSI volunteers has returned from a trip to visit and support U.S. and coalition soldiers by serving signature appetizers and entrees from OSI's five brands: Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba's Italian Grill, Bonefish Grill, Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar and Roy's Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine. This is the first year that OSI has involved all of its concepts, representing more than 1,470 restaurants, in the operation.
The most recent OSI initiative, Operation Feeding Freedom VII, fed more than 30,000 soldiers stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan, and that country's Helmand province, as well as at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.
Tampa, Fla.-based OSI's vice president of Business Support Services, Dave Alvarado, whose father was one of several family members to serve in the military, has been a team leader for three of OSI's trips to the Middle East. He spoke to Nation's Restaurant News about the difficulties and rewards of serving those who serve.
How do OSI volunteers get involved with these military-support missions? Do many of them have personal ties to the armed forces like you do?
The best way to go back is to start from the beginning. Our founder, Chris Sullivan, was having dinner with a wing commander down here in Tampa, who made an off-the-cuff comment that, since we do so much for charity, we ought to feed the troops in Afghanistan. We took that to heart.
In 2001, we started to work with Central Command, or CENTCOM. We did our first trip, to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2002. We go some place different every year, wherever CENTCOM wants us. We've been to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain and most recently to Turkey. We've included all our brands this year.
How are people picked? Well, we have 109,000 employees, so there's never a shortage. Some of them have children or parents serving, but first and foremost is that they wanted to give back and say thank you to soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, and to let them know that we haven't forgotten about them. We come armed with our hearts and our spatulas, and for one day things are a bit different for them.
We're serving them Outback's Bloomin' Onion and signature dishes. For every base we went to, we served them Outback signatures and Carrabba's pastas and then a third brand. In Kabul, we had Fleming's calamari and strip steak, then we went to Helmand and served Bonefish's Bang Bang Shrimp, and then in Turkey we added Roy's edamame and beef short ribs.
What's the hardest part about doing something for the troops like this?
Idon't think people understand the logistics of just getting food to Afghanistan. It's difficult to begin with. Nothing's easy in this whole process, but when you work with great vendors, people find ways to make things happen. The really hard part was to figure out the meal plan and have fresh produce shipped in.
When you go to feed troops in austere areas of the world, these aren't established bases. These are the front lines, with the people who it would make the most impact for. You have to be flexible with timing and locations, and you have to understand that there are missions going on.
We're there to try to enhance the experience for the soldiers, but if somebody says a plane's not going to make it [to pick us up], that plane is being used for more important things. It's like hitching rides across Afghanistan to get there. There aren't roads, and being in a war zone, trying to get people in and out safely with military transport is tough. You spend a lot of time waiting, and you have to be patient. The best-laid plans, you can throw them out once you get there.
Obviously the moral reasons for making an effort like this trump all, but are there any business benefits to your Feeding Freedom missions?
When we plan these trips and work with CENTCOM, there's never a business plan and there isn't an ulterior motive. We're truly doing it to say thank you and to give back to the military. Sometimes these soldiers think we've forgotten about them, and we're doing it to say thank you. That's our No. 1 reason. What we get out of this as a company is all the thank you notes we get from soldiers and their families. That's our ROI. They say, "Thank you for feeding my son or my daughter." When you start to read stuff like that, and see that the soldiers are so excited to tell their family members about it by e-mail, we take a huge amount of pride.
If there are other companies out there that want to do it, the ones that want to do the right thing are going to be more successful than those that do it for public relations reasons. We've been successful with the military because we're giving for the sake of giving. This would not be possible without CENTCOM and our vendors. Having vendor strength is super important. As long as you're doing it for the right reasons, people always want to bend over backwards to help.
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected]
