Name: Bay Area food banks get a coronavirus surprise: 35,000 Wagyu steaks worth $2 million
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Bay Area food banks get a coronavirus surprise: 35,000 Wagyu steaks worth $2 million

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Usually, the goods handed out by food banks are pretty basic: canned corn, apples, rice, potatoes. But thousands of people lining up for help this week in San Francisco will find an unlikely surprise in their sacks: 10 oz. American Wagyu steaks worth nearly $60 each.The prized meat was trucked from in Idaho last week to a warehouse in Fremont and is currently being cut and packaged. The family-owned farm, which focuses on raising its animals humanely, usually sells its Wagyu steak to high-end restaurants, but with those shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic, the farm is donating their steak instead.And it’s a lot of steak. The San Francisco haul will be divided into 35,000 steaks and is estimated to be worth $2 million.Volunteers with TogetherSF will deliver the steaks, most of which will go to the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. Deliveries will also be made to La Cocina, Meals on Wheels, Self Help for the Elderly and public housing sites, among other groups. People may see steaks in their grocery bags as early as Wednesday.Paul Ash, executive director of the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, said he hadn’t yet heard of the steak windfall.More by Heather Knight“You’re breaking the news to me!” he said, sounding pleasantly surprised.He said some food distributors are donating high-end products to the food bank since restaurants are shuttered, and he recently received five-pound wheels of cheese from a local cheese company which he estimated to be worth $100 apiece.with 50,000 households in San Francisco asking for food assistance — 19,000 more than just three weeks ago. The food bank is delivering bags of groceries to home-bound seniors using “a hodgepodge network of volunteers,” Ash said, including Amazon drivers who pick up the food and deliver it on their routes.Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.The steak donation is being coordinated by , a new nonprofit started by Kanishka Karunaratne Cheng, who worked as Mayor London Breed’s director of commission affairs, until earlier this month. She left to become a private consultant and run TogetherSF as a volunteer.It recruits people wanting to volunteer during the COVID-19 pandemic and matches them with people and organizations needing help. Volunteers will drive the steaks from the Fremont warehouse operated by Newport Meat, which donated its butchering services, to the various food distribution sites in the city.“It’s kind of a random thing to have come up, but it’ll be really nice to see people’s faces when they get something they really weren’t expecting,” Karunaratne Cheng said. “It’s so rewarding.”San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: Twitter: Instagram:Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.

Usually, the goods handed out by food banks are pretty basic: canned corn, apples, rice, potatoes. But thousands of people lining up for help this week in San Francisco will find an unlikely surprise in their sacks: 10 oz. American Wagyu steaks worth nearly $60 each.The prized meat was trucked from in Idaho last week to a warehouse in Fremont and is currently being cut and packaged. The family-owned farm, which focuses on raising its animals humanely, usually sells its Wagyu steak to high-end restaurants, but with those shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic, the farm is donating their...

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San Francisco bureau chief for the New York Times; former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and co-host of #TotalSF podcast; proud to call SF home

Heather Knight

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Bay Area food banks get a coronavirus surprise: 35,000 Wagyu steaks worth $2 million

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