November 21, 2024 • 10 mins
Yinzgiving began as a community-driven initiative in 2020 with a simple mission: that no one in Pittsburgh should spend Thanksgiving without a warm meal.What started as a small act of kindness has grown into a beloved community tradition, with over 5,600 meals served to individuals in need.Each year, our incredible volunteers and donors make this happen, creating a ripple effect of kindness and community spirit that lasts far beyond Thanksgiving Day! https://yinzgiving.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
And welcome in. This is the Heart of Pittsburgh podcast.
I'm your host Johnny Hartwell and we got a special
guest in studio, Clint Kusky, who is the owner and
partner of Dive Bar Grill. What is going on, my man?
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm good? Thank you?
Speaker 1 (00:23):
All right? So Thanksgiving is coming up just around a corner.
But you you are the driving partner of Yin's Giving.
So tell us everything we need to know about Yin's Giving.
First of all, what is Yan's Giving?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
So Yan's Giving?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We are going to be delivering two thousand meals to
a variety of folks that are in need this holiday season.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Now, when did Yin's Giving start? Did you? When's the
first year that you had Yan's Giving?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Twenty twenty was the first year that we had Yan's Giving.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
We partnered with Juju Smith Schuster and a Core pharmacy
and a friend Rachel Magan.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Okay, wait a minute. First of all, Juju, how'd you
get Juju involved?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Rachel was the one who sourced that one.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
But it was great because he put a name behind it,
but also put his wallet where.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Oh yeah, all right, and then tell us about Rachel.
Who's that is that somebody that you've teamed up with
with theans giving in the past years.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Rachel helped us with our marketing efforts at Dive Bar
for a while. So she connected us with a core
pharmacy who has helped with the logistics, the drivers, getting
the meals from point A to point B.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Wait a minute, you deliver the meals we do.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
We deliver two thousand meals, so they're anywhere from two
hundred and fifty meals to two meals to individual residents.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Now, how do you find the people in need.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
That generally falls with a core and Rachel, we've had
more demand than we've been able to supply for this year,
so we've had school districts that reached out to us,
at churches, assisted living facilities, so that's typically the large
orders and then a lot of clients of a core
pharmacy because they have people that you know, obviously have
(02:00):
pharmaceutical needs that can't acquire you know, the needs themselves.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That makes sense. That makes sense, all right? So you
started with Juju, but you have another celebrity who's stepped
up this year?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
We do who's that well, we have too, But the
first what we got was Andrew McCutcheon from Pirates of course,
so we're super excited to have him on board. He's
going to be delivering some meals to some folks. And then, uh,
what came of that? We have Roberto Clemente Junior, which
is also a fairly recognizable name in the Pittsburgh area.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
So, Cotch, how did you get in and get Cutch involved?
Although you know, to his credit he's always been involved
in so many charities here in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
He has, and I think that he just stumbled across
what we were doing and raised his hand and we
were just the lucky beneficiary to have him come over.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Same.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I think that whenever Kutch god on board. You know,
the small knit, tight knit community within the baseball world
here in Pittsburgh. Somehow Roberto Junior's wife was in touch
with Andrew's wife, and I think that that's how that
one came about.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
All right, now you already have the people that you're
going to deliver to. You don't necessarily need contributions. What
I'll take that back. You would like financial contributions to
help in future projects. So if somebody wants to give, what,
how can they do that?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So they could go to the website yinsgiving dot com.
There's a donation link there right now. As you mentioned,
we have cut off volunteers just because we have so many.
We have over one hundred and fifty volunteers coming in
to drive and to do meal prep. So unfortunately and
fortunately for us, that's already taken care of.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And then same with the meals.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
We've had such a demand that we're basically tapped out
at this point and hoping to expand on it in
future years. So anything above and beyond what we get
in terms of contribution, we're going to be finding a
use for those funds. So we're just trying to get
as much as we can so we can either pass
that along to a food bank for Thanksgiving or maybe
turn it into a toy drive or something for Christmas.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Talk about that, you're you're delivering two thousand meals to
needy Pittsburghers, and so let me ask you what is
in the Is it prepared meals?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
It's prepared, So we're doing the cooking on site. We
have a partner now that jumped on board this year,
Pittsburgh Barbecue Company out of Banksville Road, I believe, but
they're smoking I've been one hundred and ten turkeys.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So this isn't. This isn't like you know, canned vegetables
and a frozen turkey. This is a prepared meal.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
This is a meal in a bag, individually packed and
delivered and delivered two thousand.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Wow. The logistics of this has got to be insane.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It is, it is. It gets a little dicey at times.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
But we've done this for four years now going on five,
so I think that we're starting to work out a
lot of the kinks you get into, you know, gems
with space. You know, you can't have two thousand meals
worth of turkey showing up in your delivery and have
somewhere to store it while we're also operating the restaurants.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So we also had US foods.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
They're dropping off one of their big refrigerated trucks to
act as a second walking coller for us.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So let me you. So you have a number of
dive bar and grills. Are they all participating in this
or is this just one?
Speaker 3 (05:22):
So we're only doing it out of the Babcock location
just because the logistics fit there better. We have a
big parking lot, we have easy accessibility to get to
the different neighborhoods.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
So from there.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
We pull as many volunteers that want to stop down
from our restaurants to help prepare the meals. So though
we probably provide like twenty five or thirty of our
own employees or chef Chef Brian, who crushes this event
every year, they put in a lot of work.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, two thousand fully prepared meals delivered to their home.
That's got to be that's crazy. Now I heard about it,
but I didn't realize it was fully prepared and delivered.
That's an saying. That's great.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, I mean, it's really remarkable that we get the
amount of help that we do, not only just from
our own staff, but from the public in general. We've
had so many people asking to participate, and even last
year we had people just showing up that heard about
the event, So we had we had more than an
abundance of people, and to the point where like we
(06:22):
have five year old kids putting stickers on bags and
drawing pictures to put in the individual bags, like my
own kids, my seven year old's and my brother in
law seven year old putting pictures or I'm sorry, she's nine.
She was putting like they're just drawing pictures and throwing
them in the paper bags that go along with the meals.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
That's awesome. Plus, you got a couple of volunteers one
is this, Who is this? Andrew McCutcheon and Roberto Clemente Junior.
Those are those are pretty weighty names as volunteers.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That's pretty you know, not very recognizable people here in Pittsburgh. Yeah,
those guys both stepped up to the big time and
they're going to be a special delivery drivers for us.
So it's really amazing that those guys are coming out
and helping us.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Now you already have the individuals who are going to
receive the meal. You've also, with the help of Andrew
McCutcheon and Roberto Clementi Junior and other other people, have
paid for everything. So and you're not really asking for
people to really help out this year, but you do
need donations for other projects. Let's get into that. So
(07:29):
tell us what you need and what people need to
do to help you out.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Sure, right now we're on the verge of being fully funded,
and you know, our partners have basically signed off to
fill whatever gaps we may have. But what we want
to do is we want to push those donations from
the community as far as we can to either make
a large bulk donation to a food bank in the area,
(07:53):
or maybe roll it into a Christmas donation where we
do a toy drive or partner up with whoever's interested.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
To be honest, and if somebody wants to give, they
should go to the website.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
What is that website is yinsgiving dot com.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yins giving dot com. Pretty easy to rerect, pretty easy,
all right. So you started this just a few years
ago in twenty twenty. How many meals did you deliver
the first year? We did three hundred and you were
probably like, this is crazy. This is a lot of work.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
We were pounding our chest. We thought we accomplished something
pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Now you're up to two thousand. We are And is
it an all dape kind of process.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
It's an all week It's we've been loading up for
this and been on calls with our partners Rachel and
Sean from a core for a month and a half
to date. So it's going to be two months preparation,
just planning, and then actual preparation on site is going
to be the week of.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
All right, So you have plenty of people to thank,
so is there any anybody in on top of your
head that you really want to thank for helping out
this year?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Are our most immediate partners and Sean from Acor, you know,
like without them, we couldn't pull this event off. Our
staff obviously, Chef Bryan, he's a critical part and everything
US Foods does an amazing job for us. They donate
product and also a cold box for us to store
a lot of the product. Pittsburgh Barbecue Company is roasting.
(09:20):
I'm sorry, they're smoking all of our turkeys this year,
so that takes a tremendous amount off of our plate.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Wow. Yeah, And of course there's a couple of notable
names you probably should think too.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, we should probably mention those guys. Andrew McCutcheon from
the Pirates and Roberto Clemente Junior.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
They're both jumping on board this year.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
They said they're going to be an amazing hopefully partner
moving forward.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Well, big Roboplaus to you, Clint and your staff and
everybody for doing something good here in the Pittsburgh's take
care of Pittsburgh's and I could tell you're at Pittsburgh
to the bone. Aren't you.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I think we already had that conversation earlier, so we
uncovered that.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
All right, Dive Bar and Grill Clint, thank you so
much and good luck with Yan's giving. Thank you more information.
If you'd like to make a donation, go to yinsgiving
dot com. This has been the heart of Pittsburgh Podcast.
I'm your host, Johnny Heartwell, thank you so much for listening.
And welcome in. This is the Heart of Pittsburgh podcast.
I'm your host Johnny Hartwell and we got a special
guest in studio, Clint Kusky, who is the owner and
partner of Dive Bar Grill. What is going on, my man?
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm good? Thank you?
Speaker 1 (00:23):
All right? So Thanksgiving is coming up just around a corner.
But you you are the driving partner of Yin's Giving.
So tell us everything we need to know about Yin's Giving.
First of all, what is Yan's Giving?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
So Yan's Giving?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We are going to be delivering two thousand meals to
a variety of folks that are in need this holiday season.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Now, when did Yin's Giving start? Did you? When's the
first year that you had Yan's Giving?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Twenty twenty was the first year that we had Yan's Giving.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
We partnered with Juju Smith Schuster and a Core pharmacy
and a friend Rachel Magan.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Okay, wait a minute. First of all, Juju, how'd you
get Juju involved?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Rachel was the one who sourced that one.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
But it was great because he put a name behind it,
but also put his wallet where.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Oh yeah, all right, and then tell us about Rachel.
Who's that is that somebody that you've teamed up with
with theans giving in the past years.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Rachel helped us with our marketing efforts at Dive Bar
for a while. So she connected us with a core
pharmacy who has helped with the logistics, the drivers, getting
the meals from point A to point B.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Wait a minute, you deliver the meals we do.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
We deliver two thousand meals, so they're anywhere from two
hundred and fifty meals to two meals to individual residents.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Now, how do you find the people in need.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
That generally falls with a core and Rachel, we've had
more demand than we've been able to supply for this year,
so we've had school districts that reached out to us,
at churches, assisted living facilities, so that's typically the large
orders and then a lot of clients of a core
pharmacy because they have people that you know, obviously have
(02:00):
pharmaceutical needs that can't acquire you know, the needs themselves.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That makes sense. That makes sense, all right? So you
started with Juju, but you have another celebrity who's stepped
up this year?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
We do who's that well, we have too, But the
first what we got was Andrew McCutcheon from Pirates of course,
so we're super excited to have him on board. He's
going to be delivering some meals to some folks. And then, uh,
what came of that? We have Roberto Clemente Junior, which
is also a fairly recognizable name in the Pittsburgh area.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
So, Cotch, how did you get in and get Cutch involved?
Although you know, to his credit he's always been involved
in so many charities here in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
He has, and I think that he just stumbled across
what we were doing and raised his hand and we
were just the lucky beneficiary to have him come over.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Same.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I think that whenever Kutch god on board. You know,
the small knit, tight knit community within the baseball world
here in Pittsburgh. Somehow Roberto Junior's wife was in touch
with Andrew's wife, and I think that that's how that
one came about.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
All right, now you already have the people that you're
going to deliver to. You don't necessarily need contributions. What
I'll take that back. You would like financial contributions to
help in future projects. So if somebody wants to give, what,
how can they do that?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So they could go to the website yinsgiving dot com.
There's a donation link there right now. As you mentioned,
we have cut off volunteers just because we have so many.
We have over one hundred and fifty volunteers coming in
to drive and to do meal prep. So unfortunately and
fortunately for us, that's already taken care of.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And then same with the meals.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
We've had such a demand that we're basically tapped out
at this point and hoping to expand on it in
future years. So anything above and beyond what we get
in terms of contribution, we're going to be finding a
use for those funds. So we're just trying to get
as much as we can so we can either pass
that along to a food bank for Thanksgiving or maybe
turn it into a toy drive or something for Christmas.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Talk about that, you're you're delivering two thousand meals to
needy Pittsburghers, and so let me ask you what is
in the Is it prepared meals?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
It's prepared, So we're doing the cooking on site. We
have a partner now that jumped on board this year,
Pittsburgh Barbecue Company out of Banksville Road, I believe, but
they're smoking I've been one hundred and ten turkeys.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So this isn't. This isn't like you know, canned vegetables
and a frozen turkey. This is a prepared meal.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
This is a meal in a bag, individually packed and
delivered and delivered two thousand.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Wow. The logistics of this has got to be insane.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It is, it is. It gets a little dicey at times.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
But we've done this for four years now going on five,
so I think that we're starting to work out a
lot of the kinks you get into, you know, gems
with space. You know, you can't have two thousand meals
worth of turkey showing up in your delivery and have
somewhere to store it while we're also operating the restaurants.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So we also had US foods.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
They're dropping off one of their big refrigerated trucks to
act as a second walking coller for us.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So let me you. So you have a number of
dive bar and grills. Are they all participating in this
or is this just one?
Speaker 3 (05:22):
So we're only doing it out of the Babcock location
just because the logistics fit there better. We have a
big parking lot, we have easy accessibility to get to
the different neighborhoods.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
So from there.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
We pull as many volunteers that want to stop down
from our restaurants to help prepare the meals. So though
we probably provide like twenty five or thirty of our
own employees or chef Chef Brian, who crushes this event
every year, they put in a lot of work.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, two thousand fully prepared meals delivered to their home.
That's got to be that's crazy. Now I heard about it,
but I didn't realize it was fully prepared and delivered.
That's an saying. That's great.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, I mean, it's really remarkable that we get the
amount of help that we do, not only just from
our own staff, but from the public in general. We've
had so many people asking to participate, and even last
year we had people just showing up that heard about
the event, So we had we had more than an
abundance of people, and to the point where like we
(06:22):
have five year old kids putting stickers on bags and
drawing pictures to put in the individual bags, like my
own kids, my seven year old's and my brother in
law seven year old putting pictures or I'm sorry, she's nine.
She was putting like they're just drawing pictures and throwing
them in the paper bags that go along with the meals.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
That's awesome. Plus, you got a couple of volunteers one
is this, Who is this? Andrew McCutcheon and Roberto Clemente Junior.
Those are those are pretty weighty names as volunteers.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That's pretty you know, not very recognizable people here in Pittsburgh. Yeah,
those guys both stepped up to the big time and
they're going to be a special delivery drivers for us.
So it's really amazing that those guys are coming out
and helping us.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Now you already have the individuals who are going to
receive the meal. You've also, with the help of Andrew
McCutcheon and Roberto Clementi Junior and other other people, have
paid for everything. So and you're not really asking for
people to really help out this year, but you do
need donations for other projects. Let's get into that. So
(07:29):
tell us what you need and what people need to
do to help you out.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Sure, right now we're on the verge of being fully funded,
and you know, our partners have basically signed off to
fill whatever gaps we may have. But what we want
to do is we want to push those donations from
the community as far as we can to either make
a large bulk donation to a food bank in the area,
(07:53):
or maybe roll it into a Christmas donation where we
do a toy drive or partner up with whoever's interested.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
To be honest, and if somebody wants to give, they
should go to the website.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
What is that website is yinsgiving dot com.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yins giving dot com. Pretty easy to rerect, pretty easy,
all right. So you started this just a few years
ago in twenty twenty. How many meals did you deliver
the first year? We did three hundred and you were
probably like, this is crazy. This is a lot of work.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
We were pounding our chest. We thought we accomplished something
pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Now you're up to two thousand. We are And is
it an all dape kind of process.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
It's an all week It's we've been loading up for
this and been on calls with our partners Rachel and
Sean from a core for a month and a half
to date. So it's going to be two months preparation,
just planning, and then actual preparation on site is going
to be the week of.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
All right, So you have plenty of people to thank,
so is there any anybody in on top of your
head that you really want to thank for helping out
this year?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Are our most immediate partners and Sean from Acor, you know,
like without them, we couldn't pull this event off. Our
staff obviously, Chef Bryan, he's a critical part and everything
US Foods does an amazing job for us. They donate
product and also a cold box for us to store
a lot of the product. Pittsburgh Barbecue Company is roasting.
(09:20):
I'm sorry, they're smoking all of our turkeys this year,
so that takes a tremendous amount off of our plate.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Wow. Yeah, And of course there's a couple of notable
names you probably should think too.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, we should probably mention those guys. Andrew McCutcheon from
the Pirates and Roberto Clemente Junior.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
They're both jumping on board this year.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
They said they're going to be an amazing hopefully partner
moving forward.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Well, big Roboplaus to you, Clint and your staff and
everybody for doing something good here in the Pittsburgh's take
care of Pittsburgh's and I could tell you're at Pittsburgh
to the bone. Aren't you.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I think we already had that conversation earlier, so we
uncovered that.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
All right, Dive Bar and Grill Clint, thank you so
much and good luck with Yan's giving. Thank you more information.
If you'd like to make a donation, go to yinsgiving
dot com. This has been the heart of Pittsburgh Podcast.
I'm your host, Johnny Heartwell, thank you so much for listening.
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