Palm Springs restaurant owner partners with school district to fight food insecurity after aid disruption

 When the most recent government shutdown disrupted food assistance for many local families, a Palm Springs restaurant owner moved quickly to help ensure local students and their families did not go hungry.

Tara Lazar, a Palm Springs native and CEO of F10 Creative, a local hospitality group that owns multiple restaurants in the area, partnered with Palm Springs Unified School District to deliver meals directly to families in need. Working through her nonprofit, F10 Love, and its food truck, Frankie, Lazar helped provide meals to more than 2,000 people over the course of just two days.

“To just have someone essentially email the school district and say, ‘I want to help,’ and then three weeks later, you’re feeding 2,000 people is really, really amazing and unheard of,” said Garrett Schaperjahn, the district’s Coordinator of Student Services.

The shutdown left many families without access to critical food aid, compelling Lazar to step in. She said one of the biggest challenges in addressing food insecurity is not a lack of food, but access.

“One of the things that I’ve discovered when we’re doing food insecurity is that there’s plenty of food, but we can’t get to the people,” Lazar said. “And a lot of the people that need the food aren’t mobile.”

Lazar was not starting from zero. In 2020, she launched F10 Love alongside Frankie, a food truck designed to fight food insecurity by repurposing surplus food from local restaurants and turning it into fresh, scratch-made meals.

“We have a lot of extra food, as do many of the other restaurants in town,” Lazar said. “And I wanted to really showcase the fact that we in the restaurant industry are the most equipped to do this.”

After reaching out to Palm Springs Unified, Lazar connected with Schaperjahn and district staff, who quickly helped to identify and contact families in need. Schaperjahn said his team along with staff from the Family Engagement Center, made roughly 2,000 phone calls in a matter of weeks to coordinate the effort.

“It was all hands on deck,” Schaperjahn said.

Demand grew quickly. Schaperjahn said more families arrived on the second night than anticipated, but Lazar refused to turn anyone away.

“We definitely had more families show up the second night,” Schaperjahn said. “Instead of just saying we’re out of food, she went back and got more food, and we fed every single person who showed up, even when we were low on it, because we kind of went over on the numbers. She was so gracious about it.”

Beyond meals, the distribution also allowed district staff to connect families with additional support while they waited in line.

“It also gave us an opportunity for my staff and the Family Engagement Center staff to meet so many of our families,” Schaperjahn said. “We were actually able to provide more resources while they were in line — backpacks, school supplies and other support for families who needed it.”

Behind the effort is Lazar's deep connection to both food and community. As a Palm Springs Unified parent herself, this mission is personal.

“It’s very frustrating to me that everyone doesn’t get the beauty of food, and they don’t get the treat of food,” she said.

Lazar said she plans to continue collaborating with Palm Springs Unified to support families during times of need and believes community-driven solutions are key to fighting food insecurity.

“My mantra is, if you can’t get out of it, get into it,” she said. “We’re not getting out of this anytime soon, so how do we lean in and figure out a solution?”

Families and community members interested in supporting F10 Love can find more information here.