Local Arby’s managers feed more than 6,000 with mobile kitchen in Kentucky

MAYFIELD, Ky. — A team of Arby’s managers from the Dayton area just returned from Mayfield, Kentucky, where they gave out free meals to the people who were impacted by the devastating tornadoes.

It might have been easy for many of us to take for granted the ability to just go down the street to get a hot meal, but for Curt Oxyer, who was part of the team that went to Kentucky, he said one of the things that he will remember are the people that didn’t have the luxury that we might take for granted.

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Oxyer, who is VP of Operations for AES Restaurants, said, “Pouring down rain. Gentleman walks up to our mobile unit and he’s soaked to the skin. It’s cold outside. He asks if its true that Arby’s is giving away free meals. He asked if there was enough to take care of himself, his wife and six kids. He walked here for three miles hoping that there would be some meals. That’s how desperate folks are to find a warm meal.”

The team loaded that man up with 24 meals and gave him a ride back to this home. Oxyer said there’s multiple stories that stick out like that one. The crew was able to get to a restricted area to serve the meals. Normally their mobile kitchen serves about 1,100 meals a day.

“When the word got out, we were there, remember all three days it was heavy rain. It was cold. Dreary. Bu Saturday, we had produced 3,100 meals for a total of 6,600 meals that we provided to the folks down there,” Oxyer said.

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Oxyer shared some photos of what the destruction looked like. “I’ve done disaster relief for decades now. Been to massive hurricanes, tornado strikes. But I’ve never ever seen one with such devastation, not even close. It really looked like an atomic bomb dropped,” He said.

The Arby’s team got to Mayfield on Wednesday and served meals for three days and then got back home Sunday.

Just to be able to provide all of those free meals, they even had to get help from some of the Arby’s restaurants in Kentucky because you can only travel with so many supplies and they also didn’t realize just how great the need in Mayfield.