In the Business of Giving Back

How The Grand in Long Beach utilized its resources and vendors to create a lasting and nutritional meal plan for the homeless community.

For more than 23 years, The Grand in Long Beach has provided 45,000 square feet for whatever you want. This classy event space is operated by CEO Jim Choura and his wife, Melanie Choura.

They host roughly 240 events a month on all different occasions. Their kitchen staff has created four different styled menus to best suit your special event, but a fifth menu has been added recently.

As of March 13, 2020, The Grand, like everyone else, had just begun to confront a global pandemic head-on. All eleven acres of the venue had been brought to a standstill as the COVID-19 pandemic had started its course through Long Beach and L.A. county. That’s when Jim Choura and Vice President Dan D’Sa, saw the opportunity for a new project to manifest.

Together, Choura and D’Sa concentrated on the homeless community.

“Before people started raiding grocery stores, Jim had the idea of potentially turning The Grand into a farmers market,” said D’Sa. “During the time that we were shut down, I reached out to every single email and phone number that I had in the city of Long Beach,” D’Sa continued.

D’Sa heard back from a man after leaving thirteen voicemails and emails asking what D’Sa wanted from him. The man then put D’Sa in contact with Paul Duncan, a Homeless Services Officer for the city of Long Beach.

“I said, ‘I’m Dan D’Sa from The Grand, and we are here to help, so it’s not what I want; it’s what do you want and what do you need.’”

The homeless community is abundant in Long Beach, and with eight homeless shelters currently, there are many mouths to feed. The reality of a homeless person’s meal plan is that most of their meals come from scavenging dumpsters behind restaurants. When COVID-19 brought the restaurant industry to a halt, the homeless community lost their prime provider of meals.

The city of Long Beach interceded by opening more shelters for the homeless community. Still, for restaurants that had been assisting in feeding the homeless and the City of Long Beach, finding new means to help provide for the homeless community became less sustainable; price points became less and less equitable.

Choura and D’Sa organized a plausible price point with their vending accounts from The Grand that saved Long Beach roughly half a million dollars by making the highest quality meals at the right price point.

The formula used by The Grand to configure the best possible pricing for their menus was thrown out the window.

“We reset the whole plan to sustain staffing and our relationship with our vendor,” Choura explained.

By reworking their expenses, Choura and D’Sa, on behalf of The Grand, have created a service that provides three meals a day for homeless shelters in L.A. County: cooking creative, nutritional, and culturally sensitive meals.

“What Jim and I did was we opened a business during a pandemic, and we used what we already had existing to do so, and that fit everybody’s needs,” said D’Sa.

“We put the same care and quality into our meals as if we were doing a black-tie gala, and to be honest, the things that Jim and I have done over the last eight years, some pretty special and unbelievable events, this by far is the most special thing I’ve ever been a part of,” said D’Sa.

The food is the driving force that leads the homeless community to shelters in Long Beach, and it has now become the shared goal between Choura and D’Sa, to create bigger and better meals for shelters, to keep attendance high among the homeless community in efforts to prevent shelters from having to shut down.

The positive feedback from their service has prompted the preservation of Choura and D’Sa’s new business, and through word of mouth, their achievements within the homeless community were recognized. 

“We just signed a contract with L.A. county to start providing food,” said D’Sa.

“We’re starting with four shelters, and then by mid-April, it will go to eight.”

Choura and D’Sa have been feeding about 3,800 homeless people a day, and with the new expansion come April 2021, that number will double. 

Along with the meals, Choura and D’Sa also provide the proper storage and refrigeration of the meals, so they don’t spoil. Choura and D’Sa incorporate an essential factor into their service is the quality that goes into each meal and the benefits given from that good quality.

“When you consider the importance of nutritional meals, it increases the performance f human beings,” said Choura.

“We feel that if we can give people three nutritional meals a day, and they have that base, imagine how that multiplies into healthier thinking and illuminates disparity for their next meal.”

Meals include beef stroganoff, healthy California wraps, chicken noodle soup, breakfast burritos and sandwiches, and Spanish power bowls.

“We have a weekly call with all of our shelters to connect and see if there is anything we can improve on, and we’ve found that the assistants at the shelters eat our food as well, and it’s been really nice,” said D’Sa.

Choura and D’Sa have no plans to end this new business venture as the slow reopening of The Grand has begun to unfold.

 “The Grand and all of its divisions has its pathways coming out of this pandemic, but this one feels very good right now,” said Choura.