Name: Ryan Turner, Chris Hall and Todd Mussman
Hometown: Atlanta, GA
Job: Partners, Unsukay Community of Businesses
Excerpts from the Restaurant Neighbor Award Recipient
“Profoundly inspired by the courage, grace and strength of an Atlanta chef diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, the partners at Unsukay Community of Businesses created The Giving Kitchen in his honor.
Following the diagnosis of Ryan Hidinger in December of 2012, the partners at Unsukay — Ryan Turner, Chris Hall and Todd Mussman — mobilized the Atlanta restaurant community to plan a fundraiser to help allay medical expenses.
Well entrenched in the Atlanta restaurant scene because of Unsukay’s operations — Muss & Turner’s, Local Three Kitchen & Bar, Eleanor’s, and Common Quarter — the partners had little trouble eliciting industry help.
The event, dubbed ‘Team Hidi,’ along with roundup requests in area restaurants, raised $275,000 in a mere four weeks.
“We sold 500 tickets at $150 apiece in four days,” says Ryan Turner, co-founder of Unsukay. “It was a selfless outpouring of generosity from our vendors and from our competitors. There were 800 people in attendance, and there wasn’t a place on earth anyone who was there wanted to be other than that room. The energy was palpable. It was an amazing experience and it was transformational for Ryan (Hidinger) and his wife Jen.”
But Hidinger wasn’t the only person who was forever changed. The success of ‘Team Hidi’ also galvanized the Unsukay trio into action, and the notion of The Giving Kitchen was born.
Turner then enlisted the help of Ryan and Jen Hidinger and plans for The Giving Kitchen crystallized.
The first order of business was to formulate The Giving Kitchen’s mission: to provide crisis grants to members of Atlanta’s hospitality community facing unanticipated hardship.
“We simply decided to begin something that had never been done but whose time had come,” says Turner. “We called on our trusted peers, sought counsel and surrounded ourselves with incredibly smart, wise and caring people. The goal was to move forward and figure it out as we go.”
When The Giving Kitchen launched Turner and his partners thought the average grant would run about $10,000 but they soon discovered it was closer to $2,000.
In January 2013 the second ‘Team Hidi’ fundraiser was held with an attendance of 800 and 200 volunteers. “At the cost of only 8 cents of every dollar raised and with no corporate sponsorships, ‘Team Hidi’ 2.0 produced a net income of $325,000,” says Turner.
Through other events and donations from restaurants, businesses and organizations around Atlanta, The Giving Kitchen raised a total of $700,000 by late 2014, giving out more than 150 grants.”
