On a cold Monday afternoon Enam Khan was running back and forth between his restaurant’s tiny kitchen and the dispersed crowd of people waiting on the sidewalk outside or in cars parked nearby.
He called out names, handed off containers of warm, aromatic food and took orders quickly before rushing back in. His voice was muffled by the mask covering his mouth and nose. His wife Shaheen Khan and their small staff rushed to fill each order.
By 6:15 p.m., he and the rest of the team at Mela Bangladeshi Cuisine had given away 442 free meals to members of the Moscow community.
During a city and statewide shutdown of nearly every business in Moscow’s downtown that put countless residents out of work, Mela owner Shaheen Khan saw a chance to help the community.
“Everyone is suffering now,” Shaheen Khan said. “I should do something with my platform to help. It feels good to me to help how I can.”
Shaheen Khan started Mela as a catering business in 2014, first preparing lunches for Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories in Pullman on Fridays. The business then expanded to a Moscow Farmers Market stand on Saturdays.
Her family had moved to the Palouse from Bangladesh, while her husband completed his PhD at Washington State University. Shaheen Khan was a stay-at-home mom to the couple’s twin sons. Once the boys were old enough to have some independence, Shaheen Khan said she wanted to do something for herself. So, she began preparing recipes from back home to share with the Moscow-Pullman community.
By 2018, Mela had grown into a small restaurant sharing a courtyard with Slice and Biscuit and Steam Coffee in downtown Moscow. Until recently, customers could sit on the patio and enjoy the delicious smells wafting from the small kitchen while Shaheen Khan and a handful of employees prepared curry dishes and samosas.
But Mela was forced to pivot quickly as the threat of COVID-19 gradually shut down Moscow businesses and kept people isolated at home. First came a citywide stay-at-home order and then a sweeping statewide directive on March 25.
The patio space closed, and the restaurant started offering delivery for the first time with a 15% discount on their usual takeout services. Shaheen Khan said that was working out well for Mela, but business was slower than usual. She wanted to do more to help out other community members who also felt the pinch of the shutdown.
On March 30, Shaheen Khan, Enam Khan and their staff of eight — all volunteering to work for free that evening — prepped huge quantities of butter chicken, chickpea curry, naan and basmati rice. All that was distributed free of charge to anyone who showed up between 3 and 6 p.m. The elderly and at-risk members of the community could call to have a Mela employee deliver meals safely to their door.
In all the rush, Shaheen Khan said they missed three calls requesting delivery and were planning to provide those customers with free meals that weekend.
“It was crazy busy here,” Shaheen said. “But we maintained social distancing very nicely, no issue.”
Dylan Workman, a Mela employee for the past two years, rushed between the kitchen and deliveries across Moscow during the event. He said the staff felt a bit overwhelmed by how quickly word had spread about the event, but they were happy because they felt their efforts were for a good cause.
Workman said one delivery to an elderly man with a walker and oxygen tank that night stuck with him. After dropping off the food at a safe distance, the man held Workman back for a conversation.
“He was really kind of emotional, telling me, ‘God bless you,’” Workman said. “He seemed really touched. I think he had spread the word to some of his other friends in the same situation, and they all appreciated it a lot, I think. One tried to give me a $2 tip … I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he was going to be upset if I didn’t take it.”
Shaheen Khan said she had been fielding calls ever since the event from customers expressing their gratitude.
While many other Moscow businesses have been forced to lay off a significant portion of their staff, Shaheen Khan said Mela was committed to keeping their employees working as much as they possibly could. Several kitchen staffers lost other jobs in restaurants around town, leaving them “heartbroken,” Shaheen Khan said.
Employees have been happy to put in extra hours to ensure cleanliness even more diligently than usual because of the pandemic, Shaheen Khan said.
“We are very lucky to have them,” Shaheen Khan said. “We don’t want to just let them go … As the owner, I feel like it’s a family here, not just a workplace.”
Shaheen Khan said Mela is planning to give this month’s profits back to their staff in some way to help ease their economic burden, most likely in the form of a bonus for each employee.
Workman said he appreciated what the Mela owners were doing to help their staff. They were making sure each employee had hours instead of only keeping on a skeleton crew like many local businesses were having to do.
“I have a college degree, I could always make more money elsewhere if I wanted to,” Workman said. “But (the Khans) are the nicest people I’ve ever worked for, and that’s why I’ve continued to work for them.”
After the success of their first food donation event, Shaheen Khan said they are planning at least one or two more over the course of the ongoing shutdown. As a small business, she said they want to give as much as they can while being mindful of their limited resources.
“If we could, we would do one every week,” Shaheen Khan said. “Of course, money can be a struggle. But our policy is that we are all struggling together now, and there will be good times later.”
Shaheen Khan said she has no idea what the future looks like for Mela — like every other business, they’re taking it week by week.
“We all want to survive this together,” Shaheen Khan said. “If we help one person, that person is helping another person. It’s a cycle.”
Riley Haun can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @RHaunID.