You’ll usually see Cardiff limousines and vans on the way to an A-list party, the Palm Springs Film Festival or Coachella, but now they drive to a different location.
“We go to the food bank and we pick up a certain amount of boxes, and a certain amount of bags, and we go to each household,’ said Lauren Cardiff, who’s in charge of sales and reservations for Cardiff Limousines and Transportation.
With major events cancelled due to the pandemic, the transportation company lost 95 percent of its business.
Now, they’ve teamed up with Find Food Bank to make deliveries every other week.
Since early April, the group has served 150 people a month, giving their vans and employees a new purpose.
“You should see the look on these people’s faces, they like know me by name now, and it just feels nice to do that for everybody,” said Cardiff.
Cardiff staff says they were able to retain and pay some employees, while others are volunteering for the Food Bank, which is in need of help.
“Due to the age of our volunteers and closing down the warehouse we lost all of our volunteers,” said Erin Lucas, the community relations officer for Find Food Bank.
Throughout the last few months, Find Food Bank reports that demand at their facility has gone up one hundred and ten percent.
“The need is definitely growing. We usually have about 5,000 volunteers in the community, and at that time we were processing one million pounds of food for our warehouse a month. Right now we’re processing two million pounds of food in our warehouse a month,” said Lucas.
While they aren’t sure when business will return to normal, Cardiff plans to continue helping those who can’t leave their home.
“I’ll continue as long as I can do this. It feels really good doing it,” said Cardiff.
