We recently connected with Ethan Poon and have shared our conversation below.

Ethan , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Talk to us about building a team – did you hire quickly, how’d you recruit the first few team members? Any interesting lessons?

The Food Lounge started as a small group of friends donating toys and food to a women and children’s shelter. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I had the idea to buy meals from local restaurants that were at risk of closing in bulk at a discounted price. This was a win-win situation since they’d get much needed financial help, and we’d get good food. After doing this for a while with a group of friends, we decided to donate the meals that we were getting to a women and children’s shelter (Emily’s Place). At first, we only had a small handful of people who got together using WeChat, a social chatting platform. From there, as we reached out to our people in our community using WeChat, we started to garner more and more volunteers. If I were starting today, something that I would’ve done differently is to promote The Food Lounge more than my past self, who was much more reserved than I am today.

Ethan , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Ethan Poon, and I represent the Food Lounge as its founder and current president. As I mentioned previously, I had worked with local restaurants to purchase food in bulk, and to show his appreciation, one of the owners offered to make pizzas for us to donate to any charity we wanted. So, we contacted Emily’s Place to see if we could donate to them, and they accepted. Since then, we’ve expanded to many other restaurants, nonprofits, along with helping other charities with their work as well. As for what I’m most proud of, it’s seeing the volunteer list on SignUpGenius filling up as quickly as it does, showing that our organization has a priority of helping the community.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

One thing that I couldn’t stress enough when managing a team is keeping everyone organized and on track of what they’re doing. Simply put, keeping everyone organized and on track helps in making us more efficient in the long run, allowing us to help even more people in need. Additionally, seeing whatever you’re doing impact others for the better motivates our volunteers, which boosts team morale.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One thing that I had to unlearn was the fact that volunteer service is merely “going through the motions”. Sure, getting the job done is important, but interacting with the people around you is just as if not more important. I witnessed this fact firsthand when I first went to the Samaritan Inn, a family shelter. Serving food to the residents and talking with them along with the staff changed my outlook on volunteering as a whole, showing that “humanity” is a vital part of helping others.

Contact Info:

• Website: thefoodlounge.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.food.lounge/