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The Back Porch raises for Mercy Chefs

When the Memorial Weekend Flood happened in 2015, help came rushing to Wimberley from all over the county, state and country.

On Saturday, Wimberley found a small way to give back to one of the organizations that was onsite providing food within 24-hours of the disaster.

Mercy Chefs is a faithbased, non-profit disaster relief organization that serves professionally prepared meals to victims, volunteers and first responders after natural disasters.

On Saturday, The Back Porch hosted a crawfish boil to raise money for the charity.

“Mercy Chefs came into existence because of Katrina and founder Gary Leblanc standing in New Orleans watching everything be dysfunctional,” Jay Bachman, owner of The Back Porch, said. “He decided he was not going to let it happen again. People were never going to starve after a disaster… We wanted to honor the beginning of Mercy Chefs by going Deep South with Louisiana recipes with beignets and crawfish and do it up right.”

It was estimated that 800 people were fed at the event that started at 9 a.m. and went until 9 p.m. and that more than 1,000 came through the doors. All proceeds went to Mercy Chefs.

Bachman fell in love with the organization when he saw what it was doing in Wimberley. They had a full team of chefs in town for about two weeks helping feed those in need after the flood.

“I remember we were in within 24 hours,” Gary Leblanc, founder of Mercy Chef’s said. “The first guy onsite called me back and said ‘This is really where we need to be.’ We were getting calls from all over this part of Texas for help. He said ‘I’m standing on the bridge and there is a piece of a house on top of it and tree limbs through the guardrails. They are going to need us here in Wimberley.’”

Since Mercy Chefs came to Wimberley, Bachman has joined the group and traveled to places like Garland for damage from tornadoes, Rockport to help after Hurricane Harvey and assisted during the floods in Baton Rouge and Angleton.

Meanwhile, other Mercy Chefs have been popping up in Wimberley. Along with Bachman and Leblanc, three other Chefs were thanked at the event. Jody Merritt, who works at The Back Porch, Logan Clewell, a former chef at The Back Porch, and Ashbi Wilson, who owns Goodies A Go Go.

“When Harvey hit, we closed for a few days to go help and I told Ashbi she can use our kitchen for whatever she wanted,’ Bachman said. “She ended up feeding all the evacuees that were staying at The Lodge at Cypress Falls three meals a day. As soon as I got back, she went to Rockport to take my place the next day.”

Mercy Chefs doesn’t just stay in the United States either. Leblanc said that they had just returned from Guatemala where a volcanic eruption devastated the country.

“We took a little different roll this time,” Leblanc said. “We actually equipped their kitchen and got them products but we were also buying medical supplies and clothing and taking tangible needs to some of the relocation centers. We were stepping in wherever we saw a need. Up the side of the mountain all the way to ground zero I was walking on dirt that was still hot a week after the volcano.”

The group has also built three kitchens in Puerto Rico where they have “ongoing operations” after the hurricane. They are even working a bit beyond food as they are trying to help build solar panels for 30 homes that Leblanc said may never have electricity brought to them again.

For more information on Mercy Chefs or to donate to the cause, visit www.mercychefs.com.

Wimberley View

P.O. Box 49
Wimberley, TX 78676
Phone: 512-847-2202
Fax: 512-847-9054