$2 million worth of Wagyu steaks donated to San Francisco food banks, nonprofits

SAN FRANCISCO -- Snake River Farms of Idaho donated 35,000 Wagyu steaks to a number of small nonprofits in San Francisco Wednesday, a donation worth $2 million.

"A friend of a friend mentioned there was this big steak donation that wanted to be made in SF and they didn't know who to give it to or how to handle it. Because I have a lot of contacts with non-profits and community organizations it all came together," said Kanishka Karunaratne Cheng, who helped connect the donor with the recipients.

Cheng co-founded a new non-profit, Together SF when the pandemic hit. She saw the need for food, senior citizens who needed help shopping, and other issues the pandemic caused in the city. But she never dreamed her charity would be involved in something like this.

"So random! So bizarre! I was like- 'are you sure? Are we really doing this?' Turns out yes we are! They showed up today and we are delivering them," she said as non-profits picked up the steaks.

Snake River Farms usually sells to San Francisco's fine restaurants. With restaurants closed, the company decided to donate. The company said in a statement it knows food can bring comfort in a crisis and it wanted affected communities in California to know how much they mean to the company.

Susan Murphy from Faces SF picked up 600 steaks to take to a food drive in the Bayview District.

"They will be extremely surprised and grateful especially to have meat on the table," she said.

Cheng said they chose small non-profits that often get overlooked when a large donation is distributed.

The George W. Davis Senior center in the Bayview was one of the recipients. The director said the chef was excitedly planning how to serve the 3,000 premium steaks.