If there’s one thing Marissa Hermer is good at, it’s feeding people.
The restaurateur and former “Ladies of London” star is among the thousands affected by the devastating wildfires ravaging the Los Angeles area. Hermer, who was evacuated from her home in Pacific Palisades on Wednesday, is now giving back to the community she has lived in for the past decade.
“(My ex-husband and I) both had to walk in, carry all the stuff we could get on our backs and fronts and pile them up,” Hermer told TODAY.com. “I wore every piece of jewelry I owned and carried tons of bags and walked out about a mile… you scan your house and think, okay, what am I going to take? You know, there’s no planning for this. We didn’t have a go bag.”
Hermer tells TODAY.com about launching a food delivery service for those affected by the fires called ‘YOU GIVE. WE COOK. THEY EAT.” In less than 24 hours after losing her popular French brasserie The Draycott in the Pacific Palisades Village shopping center, she has turned her tragedy into action.
“While I was taking the kids and dogs to a hotel, around 6 p.m. I thought about what all parents think about, which is, ‘What are we going to eat?’ And then I thought there are a lot of people in Los Angeles wondering what to eat. And if you don’t have a kitchen, that’s an even bigger challenge.”
Marissa Hermer is packing meals with her team at Chez Mia.
Hermer has now opened the kitchens of her other restaurants Chez Mia and Olivetta in West Hollywood to prepare hot meals – including bread, salad and pasta – for families, firefighters, shelters and hospital workers.
“If you don’t know if your house is still standing and if you don’t know where your kids are going to school or if you don’t know what you’re going to do, lean on the things you do know – and I know how to cook,” she says. “So I thought, ‘Okay, let’s cook food for a lot of people because we can. And we have a team that can do it.”
Hermer says she has already raised enough money to feed 250 families of four. It’s a program she initially launched during the COVID pandemic, and anyone anywhere in the world can donate by texting “DINNER” to 707070.
On Hermer’s Instagram, displaced families in LA in need of food can comment “family” for a free meal; people can nominate a displaced family in need of food by commenting “nominate family” and tagging the person; and drivers who can pick up food from the restaurants and deliver it to families can mention “driver.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to say, ‘By the way, I want to eat or I need a meal.’ We are not programmed to ask for what we need,” she says. “So if you know a family that needs a meal or someone who could use one, you can nominate them and we will contact you.”
The program, which Hermer said has successfully fed thousands of people during the pandemic, also relies on volunteers to get the food to those in need.
Marissa Hermer (right) with members of her team preparing meals at Chez Mia.
“What we’ve learned during the pandemic is that community is much more than your post office and your local coffee shop and the physical community. This is what community is. It is togetherness and connection,” she says.
But it’s not just Hermer’s restaurant that she lost: her children’s school is gone, her friends’ houses are no longer standing, and she’s not sure she has a home to return to.
But for now, Hermer, who is staying in a hotel with her children, is focusing on giving back.
“I’m alive. I’m surviving. It comes in waves,” she says. “Last night I didn’t know what to do. I was sobbing. I had no answers. The devastation is enormous and not unique to me. It’s being shared by the masses and probably by the world right now… and then sometimes I think, ‘Oh my God, we can do this. There is hope. We can unite. We are community. Let’s solve this. Let’s help.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
