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Haiti restaurant helps earthquake victims

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It was a favorite spot for those who could afford it, to relax with a pizza and beer, and watch the world go by on the streets of Petionville, Haiti. Now it’s more popular than ever, drawing more than a thousand people a day for an all-too-rare free hot lunch. Since the devastating earthquake last month, some local businesses have turned to philanthropy and Muncheez Restaurant is one of them. Katy Clark speaks with restaurant owner Clifford Rouzeau.

• Muncheez website
• Muncheez food drive photos on facebook
• Christian Science Monitor story
• Haiti coverage on the BBC

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KATY CLARK:  It was a favorite spot for those who could afford it.  A place to relax with a pizza and a beer and watch the world go by on the streets of Petionville, Haiti.  Now, after last month’s devastating earthquake, Muncheez Restaurant is more popular than ever.  Hundreds of people a day go there for a free hot lunch.  Clifford Rouzeau is the owner of Muncheez Restaurant.  Mr. Rouzeau, when did you start offering a free lunch to people there in Petionville, and why?

CLIFFORD ROUZEAU:  Well, the day after the earthquake we came in and there was a lot of people in the streets and we started thinking about what we could do to help out.  Since what we do is food, we said well let’s go ahead and start cooking whatever we have in our stock and start feeding those people.

CLARK: How many people came each day at first and what kind of crowd are you getting now?

ROUZEAU: Well, depending on the day we go anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 people.  Since we always put children first, we’re getting a lot more children than grown ups.

CLARK: What is it that you’re serving?

ROUZEAU: Well it depends on the day.  We started with pizzas and chicken wings and we had a little donation of wheat, so we started cooking wheat.  We do rice some days.  We try to do vegetables and a little meat.  A lot of beans, protein and some water.  Actually, right now we’re out of water, so for the past four days we’ve been serving food without water.

CLARK: How do you get the food to serve?  I would imagine you’ve gone through the stocks in your restaurant already.

ROUZEAU: Well, you know, something funny, every other day when we think we’re going to run out of food, somebody comes by and drop a couple bags of rice.  Somebody would come by and drop a couple cases of spaghetti.  It just happens like that.  We have a lot of friends and businessmen of this country that actually come by anonymously.

CLARK: Are you also buying some of the food yourself from area markets?

ROUZEAU: Of course.  Every day we do send some people out and buy some vegetables and some meat.

CLARK: So you have people sitting there eating and you have a line of sometimes 1,000 people there waiting for their food.  Is it fairly orderly?

ROUZEAU: Actually, you know what, it’s surprising.  When it first started people was trying to do it in their own manner and I put them in line and I said you know, if you guys are not going to do this in an orderly fashion, I’m just going to stop feeding you.  And they actually by now got used to it and they get in line and very orderly with as little noise as possible.  They come down and they get what they get and they go.

CLARK: Do you have any kind of security force there to help you?

ROUZEAU: Actually, not really.  I have my own security guard and I have staff of about 100 people so we can handle ourselves and there’s really no violence or anything like that over here.

CLARK: We’re always hearing about food distributions by NGOs and the U.N. that aren’t working.  There are not enough people being reach or fears about security incidents stall the process.  I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on why your model seems to be effective and what others might learn from it.

ROUZEAU: Well the problem is that they come here and they’re not used to the Haitian people and they give away a bag of 100 kilos of rice to one person.  What I did is like, when World Vision actually gave me 180 bags a week, I took those bags of 100 kilos, I broke them down into three pound bags and I set up a station wagon, gave out the three pound bags.  Because when you give a bag of 100 kilos to somebody.  What they going to do?  Turn around and sell it in the next market because those people are trying to get as much as they can right now.  They know in the future basically what’s getting distributed right now, that’s all they’re going to get.

CLARK: And I understand you have two other restaurants in the Port-au-Prince area.  Are they open now as well?

ROUZEAU: Actually, they’re still closed.  I’m planning this week to open both of them.  We are working on cleaning up, checking the gas system and everything to make sure we didn’t have any damage and we’re going to go ahead and reopen.

CLARK: I’m wondering about your employees as well.  How many do you have and how were they impacted by the earthquake?

ROUZEAU: Well they were all impacted.  A lot of them are homeless as well.  But at least they have a job still and I give them as much as I can from what I get from friends and whoever gives me stuff.

CLARK: How long do you think you’ll be able to keep on offering these free meals?

ROUZEAU: I plan on keep on doing it as long as I can.  I can’t put a number or time limit on what I’m doing, but I’m going to do it as long as is humanly possible to do.

CLARK: Clifford Rouzeau is the owner of Muncheez Restaurant in Petionville, Haiti.  The restaurant is giving out free lunches in the aftermath of last month’s earthquake.  Thank you so much.

ROUZEAU: Thank you.

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