Rockaway Lunch Plate is a gratis food truck run by Beastie Boy Mike D and his friend Robert McKinley, who works in the restaurant and hotel business, that services victims of Hurricane Sandy with free food, including chicken, rice, beans, and veggies. The inspiration came immediately after the storm when Mike D and McKinley went out to the Rockaways in Queens to help with damages and supply-donations, but noticed that with all the power outages and closed businesses, it was impeding people’s access to food. Read more and watch video footage below.

As he told GOOD:

We saw right away all these people living without any power, without any businesses being open, and therefore, no food. We saw the immediate need for warm food, but we didn’t have time to put together a long-term cohesive plan, we just had to react quickly. Rob comes from the hotel and restaurant business, and with myself, being involved in a couple of restaurants and just knowing all the friends in that world, we were able to draw on a bunch of these contacts and start bringing food out from restaurants in the city. But we quickly saw, to get a lot of people fed and to have something warm we needed a truck. So we went to Sam Talbot, the Breslin/Spotted Pig team, and the Fat Radish people and said ‘hey, we’re going to get this food truck going, but can you guys provide us with chefs and cooking expertise to execute this?’ Thankfully, people were already looking for a way that people could be of service out there and this was a super grassroots, very direct way that they could.

The truck has serviced over 19,000 meals to date and is still running on a reduced schedule.