Crimson and Gold Connection; Matt O'Malley

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection. My name is Dustin Triber and today's guest is Matt O'Malley. He is a Pittsburgh State University alumni. He's also an alum of St. Mary's Colgan here in Pittsburgh. And he is actually the new leader or the man in charge of the Lord's Diner here in Pittsburgh, Kansas. So welcome, Matt. Thanks for having me. And I'd like you to tell us a little bit more about yourself, some of your background, your time here at Pitt State, and then of course what's happening at the new Lord's Diner here in town. Yeah, you got it. So yes, I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, went to St. Mary's Colgan and graduated in 2002, and then went to Pitt State, earned my bachelor's in business administration in 2008, started college in 2002. So that's six years of school and I am not a doctor. I was very, very good at being a freshman in a sophomore. After college, I was selling cars out at Pittsburgh Ford, a family business, and it just wasn't for me. I didn't really have a passion. I didn't enjoy going to work. So I started to look into other things, and I thought, well, Matt, you're really good at helping people.

And so how can I make that a career? I joined AmeriCorps in 2010, and I landed at a nonprofit in Kansas City, Kansas called Crosslines Community Outreach. I did a year of national service there, and then they hired me on. After my year of service, I did, I managed a USDA Commodities Food Program for low-income seniors for about three years, as well as a community garden. Really big garden that we grew about 5,000 pounds of food a year, and gave it out for free to people that couldn't really afford fresh produce. I did that for a few years, and then we had some leadership changes, and I became an operations and volunteers director. When they gave me that job, I said, okay, I'll take it, but I've been telling you all along, I'm going back to Pittsburgh. I always wanted to come back to Pittsburgh. I really left to learn the skills necessary to lead a nonprofit,

and it took five or six years, but I did it. And so I started to kind of look into things. I was married in September of 2015. My wife and I really wanted to come back to Pittsburgh to start our family. It's such a nice community here. I was lucky enough to grow up with grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles, and that's really special, and we wouldn't have really had that in Kansas City. And we wanted to have our first baby, and well, we don't even know how to change a diaper. And so we got to thinking, you know what, we're going to need help with this. We're going to need grandparents around. So we decided to come back to Pittsburgh, and right at that very time, by the grace of God, the Lord's diner became a real thing that was going to come to Pittsburgh. And so I contacted the people in charge of that and let them know that, you know, hey, I think in a way, God's been preparing me for this job for five or six years. I really want to come in for an interview.

And then they hired me on in August, and the rest is history. And everything seems to be working out, because now we're expecting our first baby. Congratulations. Thank you. And the Lord's diner, for those that do not know, actually started a few years ago in Wichita under Bishop Gerber. And it gives a little history about that and eventually brought this branch to Pittsburgh. Yeah, great question. So the Lord's diner opened its first restaurant in 2002. Basically, Bishop Gerber was bringing in some of the homeless community members in Wichita for lunches and dinners into his own home. And he started to near retirement and thought, well, gosh, what's going to happen to my guys here? How are they going to get fed? And so they decided, well, let's just open a place that serves dinner every day. Since then, they have opened another location in Wichita. So they have two restaurants, and they just launched their third food truck. In Wichita, they are serving almost 3,000 meals a day, every single day of the year.

Basically, the board of directors at the diocese was meeting with the current Bishop Chemie and saying, hey, you know, look at all these great things we're doing. And Bishop Chemie said, well, yeah, but they're all in Wichita. This is the Catholic diocese of Wichita. We need to do more. So they started to look into other areas of the diocese that really needed help. Crawford County, just recently in the most recent polls that came out. Crawford County now has the highest poverty rate in the state of Kansas. Basically, about 17.5% of Crawford County residents don't know where their next meal is coming from. So they took that info back to the diocese and said, okay, you know, Southeast Kansas is where we need to do something. What do we do? A bunch of the leaders on that advisory council met with nonprofit leaders in Pittsburgh and asked, okay, the diocese wants to do something. What's the biggest need here?

And the response was 100% food. There's a hunger problem. That's what we need help with in Southeast Kansas. Well, that was the perfect thing because then they got to think in, well, we've already got the Lord's Diner. It works really well. Let's just copy that entire model and place it down in Pittsburgh. And so that's sort of how it all happened. They had to really get a lot of support. They had to make sure that there was going to be enough volunteers to work there. That there was going to be enough donations coming in to operate such a venture and did all the studies and sure enough. They took it back to the bishop and said, this is feasible. Let's make this happen. The Lord's Diner just opened up recently here in Pittsburgh. When is it open? Who's it open to and how can people help out? I know you're looking for volunteers all the time. Yes. Yeah, we opened January 15th. We served our first community meal. Basically, there are two ways to help. So we only have a staff of four. But four people cannot serve hundreds of people at dinner each night.

And so we have about five or so volunteers come in from noon to three and help make that day's food. And then we have 20 volunteers come in from five to eight p.m. and serve that food. We have lots of different groups, civic and social groups, local businesses, high school and college students. Lots of different groups that are helping, as well as 17 different church-affiliated groups of 10 different denominations. And we're very proud of that. But basically, if people wanted to help, they could just give us a call at the Lord's Diner at 240-4134. Or just stop on by. We could have you fill out a volunteer application and get you scheduled in to help serve meals to the community. Sounds great. The Lord's Diner is actually located at. We are at 406 North Locust, and we serve a free evening meal to anyone that walks in the door. From 530 to 730 p.m., no questions asked. Matt O'Malley, Director of the Lord's Diner here in Pittsburgh, Kansas.

Thank you so much for coming in and speaking with us on Crimson and Gold Connection. You got to go gorillas.