James Harden is continuing his commitment to help the people of Houston. In collaboration with Postmates, Harden will be donating 100 meals a day this week to five pre-selected HISD schools to make sure students go home with a hot meal for dinner from his Thirteen Restaurant.
The first meal drop took place on Wednesday, Feb. 24 at Worthing High School (9215 Scott Street) in the Sunnyside area of Houston. The staff at Harden’s Thirteen Restaurant delivered 100 meals to the students at Worthing and will be delivering 100 meals to Shadydale Elementary School today, Feb. 25, at 12:30pm and 100 meals to Cuney Homes for students at Yates High School on Friday, Feb. 26, 2021 at 12:30 pm.
Harden is also teaming up with Postmates, an entity that deals with on-demand restaurant and retail home delivery, to help Houstonians and the local restaurant industry. Postmates has created a CODE that will waive delivery fees for Houstonians for up to 5,000 deliveries over the next week. Anyone in Houston that uses the Postmates CODE “13LovesHOU” can receive free delivery of any order/restaurant on the Postmates App. The code will expire in one week or when the limit of 5,000 free deliveries is reached.
Harden gave away 3,000 hot meals and cases of water at Thirteen on Saturday and delivered another 150 meals to the Anna Dupree low-income senior housing apartments in Sunnyside earlier this week. The eight-time NBA All Star is working to help Houston residents with food, water, supplies, manpower and contractors to clean up and rebuild properties damaged by Winter Storm Uri.
“Houston holds a special place in James’ heart,” said Rosea Grady, General Manager at Thirteen. “Knowing people are hurting and don’t have access to or the means to get hot meals, or water, James is making sure we are boots on the ground here trying to help as many families and individuals in the community as possible every day at Thirteen. We’re really grateful to Postmates for jumping in to help by waiving delivery fees for any restaurant on their app so people get hot meals delivered right to their homes as they try and recover from this disaster.”
Harden has long been a huge supporter of the Houston community, in times of crisis and calm. Following the destruction caused by Hurricane Harvey, he visited flood evacuees and donated $1 million to the city’s relief efforts. In October, he partnered with Kroger to provide a weeks’ worth of groceries to 600 families each week for eight weeks to help vulnerable families during the Coronavirus crisis. The NBA All-Star has also made a difference in the lives of children in the community, providing Christmas shopping trips, backpacks, school supplies, Thanksgiving dinners, personal visits, gymnasium renovations and educational scholarships.
Harden’s new upscale Houston restaurant, Thirteen, located at 1911 Bagby Street in Midtown, is scheduled to open to the public on March 4, 2021.