Joe Burrow Helped Fix the Hunger From His Heisman Speech

In December 2019, a college quarterback stood on stage at the Heisman Trophy ceremony and started talking about food instead of football.

The Speech That Made America Cry

Joe Burrow had just won the Heisman as LSU's quarterback, capping a record-breaking season.

But the moment everyone remembers is what he said next.

Burrow choked up describing the poverty and hunger he saw growing up in Athens, Ohio, a small Appalachian college town where he played high school football.

He said he was accepting the award for the kids back home who sometimes did not know if they would have their next meal.

The speech went viral overnight.

Within weeks, donations to the Athens County Food Pantry topped $500,000, according to news coverage at the time.

It was a huge one-time surge for a small local food bank.

But a single wave of donations does not fix hunger for good.

A Kitchen With His Hometown's Area Code

Six years after that speech, the Joe Burrow Foundation went looking for something more permanent.

The 740 Rescue Kitchen took shape at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio through 2024, with the Joe Burrow Foundation as lead partner, before officially launching to the public in April 2025.

It is named for the area code that covers Athens and the surrounding region.

The launch event, called "From Surplus to Supper," was set to be attended by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and First Lady Fran DeWine.

The foundation leaned on La Soupe, an established rescue kitchen in Cincinnati, to help design the operation.

The idea is simple: take food that would otherwise be thrown away and turn it into meals for people who need them.

How It Actually Works

The kitchen collects surplus food from grocers, food manufacturers, restaurants, farms, and universities across southeast Ohio.

Volunteers and staff turn that food into free, chef-prepared meals, then deliver them to schools, senior centers, shelters, and food pantries.

The program now reaches ten counties in southeast Ohio, including Athens, Hocking, Vinton, Washington, Meigs, Gallia, and Jackson.

It is tackling two problems at once.

Ohio throws away an estimated 1.5 million tons of food every year, about 40 percent of everything the state wastes.

At the same time, roughly 1.7 million Ohioans do not have reliable access to enough food.

In Athens County specifically, the food insecurity rate sits around 16 percent, well above the state average of 11.5 percent.

The Follow-Through

Plenty of athletes give an emotional speech and move on.

The 740 Rescue Kitchen is a working kitchen, with a coordinator, delivery routes, and school partnerships, built in the exact place Burrow was talking about when he choked up on that stage.

The area code in the name is the point.

It is not a general charity.

It is aimed at the same kids he mentioned in 2019, who are now old enough to remember hearing their hometown mentioned on national television.