L'Oca d'Oro Owners Advocate for Change and Support in the Austin Food Community
By Jessi Cape, Fri., Nov. 27, 2020
They'll probably say "pishposh" to any notion of accolade and redirect your attention to Good Work Austin. So we'll do that, too. But first you should know that, during this year made so impossible for restaurants and their people, L'Oca d'Oro co-owners Adam Orman and Fiore Tedesco showed up for their internal community, and then the entire greater Austin area, setting an example of how to ethically handle unprecedented circumstances. When the pandemic shuttered their small Italian restaurant, the longtime proponents of One Fair Wage exhausted all financial and bureaucratic measures to care for their staff, and then got to work cooking and delivering meals for front-line health care workers and AISD, among many other groups. And then, of course, comes their work with Good Work Austin, a local nonprofit aimed at creating guidelines for employers and advocating for policy change at local and state levels. Through a network of small businesses, the group works to provide basic but critical services such as low-cost health care, mental health counseling, and financial literacy courses, in addition to championing diversity and inclusion at every level. These tireless movers and shakers have recently reinvented their restaurant model, allowing patrons missing their house-made mozzarella to subscribe for lovely weekly meals in the safety of home. To be sure, in between packaging cooler bags, Tedesco and Orman are still out there quietly making our city a better place.
