Off Their Plate:
Restaurant Voices

This documentary series is a collaboration with Off Their Plate's Voices, a platform amplifying the personal stories of foodservice professionals across the U.S.

Purpose

This documentary series is a collaboration with Off Their Plate (OTP), a nonprofit supporting local restaurants and healthcare workers under crisis from COVID-19.

Off Their Plate's Voices is a platform to amplify the personal stories of participants of the food economy: foodservice professionals, community partners, and volunteers. We focus on underrepresented groups in OTP cities across the country. We tell stories of people throughout the food economy, sharing their fears, perspectives, hopes and outlooks on the future of food and hunger in the wake of COVID-19. Through multimedia, interviews, portraits, and short videos, we produce authentic and thoughtful content to highlight the diversity, talents, and cultures of the people who prepare, serve, and receive food.

In this series, we learned about the stories of two LA restaurants, Malibu Farm and Rice Guys.

Services

Creative Direction

Cinematography

Video Production

Post-Production

Photography

Client

Off Their Plate

Credits

Film Direction: Eldon Arena & Margaret To

Cinematography: Eldon Arena

Editing: Michelle Huang & Eldon Arena

Interview + Design: Margaret To

Production: Jocelyn Ueng

Film Stills

Interviews and b-rolls captured in our video shoot.

Process

Interview Approach: We made sure to create a safe space where our interviewees feel comfortable sharing, learning, and growing. We kept the interviews conversational, and offered reassurances to interviewees when needed. We also followed COVID considerations (PPE, social distancing) during our interviews.

Impact

The stories we tell are eye-opening and provide a sense of responsibility, especially to non-food industry folks, to feel a part of a bigger puzzle. With this series and Voice's platform, we hope to:

Educate our audiences to build empathy for independent restaurant workers, food-insecure populations, and the community organizations that support them
Promote livelihood & morale of women & BIPOC in the food system
Showcase diversity of the industry, highlighting underrepresented & vulnerable groups
Reveal the realities of the inefficiencies in our food system, while uplifting those making change

Learn more and donate at offtheirplate.org, and check out more stories from Voices on Instagram.