Chris Young Helping Feed Healthcare Workers in Partnership With Cracker Barrel
Chris Young is grateful for good health and grateful that no one in his immediate circle has needed attention from the thousands of healthcare workers helping coronavirus (COVID-19) patients nationwide. He's safe, so the least he could do is help those on the front lines be comfortable.
The "Drowning" singer and his record label, Sony Music Nashville, have partnered with Cracker Barrel to give 10,000 meals to healthcare professionals on the front line of the coronavirus battle. It's the There's Comfort in Giving program, and Young chose to have meals delivered to Vanderbilt University Medical Center personnel in Nashville.
“I’ve definitely got some people close to me that are either directly or indirectly helping out with a lot of this stuff right now so, you worry for them," he tells Taste of Country. "You also have a huge amount of respect for them being on the front lines of this.”
"We got a lot of dates and information and not so much the personal stories of it," Young says. That's another reason he's using his platform to help. Additional meals will be donated for every $10 gift card purchased at Cracker Barrel's website. To kick off his participation, Young performed for 30 minutes from his kitchen during a recent Facebook Live stream.
“To be able to put all those all of those things into place at the same time I thought was really cool,” he says, admitting that a longing to perform again made the set extra special.
Scotty McCreery, Matt Stell, Pat Green, Mitchell Tenpenny, Eli Young Band, and Maddie & Tae are a few other artists participating in the Cracker Barrel Program. Young's team is safe and healthy now, but he's not immune to the fear of the pandemic. When news first broke and the gravity of the situation became obvious, he feared for his father, who is a cancer survivor with high blood pressure who is also missing part of his lung.
“And he’s getting older," the singer says during a phone call from his front porch in Nashville. "So that’s another thing that makes it very real for me, just knowing I got a family member that’s in several of those high risk categories.”
When gratitude becomes philanthropy, we all win.
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