Subway restaurants of North Carolina, Johnson & Wales University, and the American Red Cross announced that they will join forces to provide meals for victims in the event of a natural disaster hitting the Tar Heel state. To prepare for an event of such magnitude, JWU students and employees, Subway franchisees, Red Cross staff, and other support personnel will assemble at the JWU-Charlotte Campus culinary labs on August 24 to conduct an emergency food preparedness drill.

Five hundred boxed meals will be prepared from scratch, consisting of 6-inch Subway sandwiches, cookies, bottled water, and other items. All food items, meal preparation and assembly, transportation, and other support items will be donated by the following: Frito-Lay, Screiber Foods Inc. (a global dairy company), IPC (a purchasing cooperative that is Subway franchisee owned and operated), the Coca Cola Company, Select Product Group LP (supplier of paper napkins and other products), French’s Foods, Kraft Foods Inc., Otis Spunkmeyer Inc., and Butterball. Following the drill, the boxed meals will be delivered to the Uptown Shelter in Charlotte.

“Charlotte is an ideal staging area due to its central location and our ability to reach natural disaster victims anywhere in the state within 4 to 5 hours,” says Pamela Jefsen, regional chapter executive of the Carolina Piedmont Region of the American Red Cross, which encompasses 14 counties in North Carolina. “We’re grateful to JWU and Subway for helping our organization provide basic needs to those who will need it most in times of disaster.”

The drill will be conducted in real-time, from transporting and unloading items at the JWU campus, baking the bread and cookies, preparing and making the sandwiches, assembling 500 boxed meals, and finally the reloading of trucks.
To put the natural disaster victims’ meal program in motion, the Red Cross estimates a minimum need of 3,000 meals and up to as many meals required to feed victims and first responders.