Tacos, sloppy joes, mac ’n’ cheese. Many of us still remember looking forward to that special day when the school cafeteria was serving our favorite food for lunch.
When local schools closed in March—and their cafeterias along with them—Good Company Doughnuts & Cafe began offering free weekday lunches to school-age kids on a walk-in basis. As of late July, the restaurant had provided nearly 3,000 such meals.
“We knew a lot of kids get their meals through the school program and wanted to make sure they still had something to eat,” says Charlie Kachadoorian, co-owner of the family- and veteran-owned café, which opened in Ballston in 2019. “We have a big family. My sister has all the recipes we grew up with, and now she makes them for her kids—all the favorites. We just extended that and tried to introduce some healthy stuff, like apple slices, or maybe a tuna sandwich instead of a hot dog.”
In recent months, Good Company has also donated meals to staff in the NICU at Children’s National in Washington, D.C., along with doughnut decorating kits for kids in the hospital’s long-term care unit. It’s now contributing another 34 meals per week to a county-subsidized food program through Volunteer Arlington.
To sweeten the deal (literally), each meal comes with a free doughnut. Kachadoorian says the most popular flavors include classic honey glazed, strawberry glazed, sourdough and the Cocoa Cat, a chocolate cake doughnut made with Black Cat espresso.