By Stephanie Eisemann, news staff
In a city with over 7,200 homeless individuals, there are plenty of hungry people living in Boston. Northeastern student Tejas Bala is doing his part to help fight the issue with his new campaign, Project Burrito, a spin on the Qdoba rewards program.
Frequent Huntington Avenue Qdoba patrons may be familiar with the rewards program. Customers can register a rewards card for free and scan it every time they purchase an entrée. The Mexican food chain’s website explains that users earn 100 points for every entrée purchased and every 1,000 points earned is equivalent to a free entrée, essentially a buy-ten, get-one-free system.
“The goal is to circulate [one rewards card] and have the community buy into it,” Bala, a freshman math major, said. “Whenever people go in and buy a burrito or a taco or whatever and they don’t have their own rewards card they can use this one, and it banks the points…If there are enough burritos rewarded we can go out the Commons or downtown Boston and hand out burritos.”
Bala is running Project Burrito on his own, but he was inspired by an older friend, Chris Overcash, who once set up the same campaign in Philadelphia.
“I helped out with that,” Bala said. “We had about ten burritos and we went around to LOVE Park and we just handed them out.”
Project Burrito has yet to cash in and hand out the awarded meals in Boston.
“I contacted a couple shelters, just to see the areas that I should go to,” Bala said. “Most of the shelters are very large and like around 400 families, so it’s going to be over my capacity…but it’s definitely good to go talk to them and see if there’s a way, for people who don’t get into shelters at night, maybe I’ll especially go there and wait for them.”
The original Philadelphia campaign died out, but Bala was undeterred.
“Before coming here in the summer I was like ‘that would be pretty cool if we could do this’ especially for Northeastern because our Qdoba’s right on campus,” Bala said. “So he already had the rewards card set up, so basically all I had to do was circulate it.”
Qdoba patron Catherine Auger-Morin thought the idea seemed interesting, but wanted to know more about exactly where her contribution would be going.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Auger-Morin, a high school senior from New Hampshire, said. “It encourages people to come here so it’s good for the restaurant, it’s good for the cause and it’s good for the community of the school.”
So far the card has been circulated mainly through word of mouth, both in person and through Facebook platforms. Bala’s close friends swipe for Project Burrito when they visit the establishment, and people in Facebook groups have been receptive to the idea.
“I want to do my best to express why I want to do this and why it’s a good thing to do,” Bala said. “I mean people seem to be buying into it but it’s like different for them to say it’s a good idea versus them actually using it. So I just want to get to the point where people want to use it and tell their friends to use it.”
Project Burrito also has a website which tracks how many points the card has earned and will log how many people the free food has helped feed in the city. Bala is currently working on hanging up flyers with a rip-off or a picture that would enable visitors to use the card without having it physically in their possession. He also plans on working with Qdoba to place the card by the cashier so that it is readily available. Bala’s main vision is to see Project Burrito grow into a norm.
“I hope it’s widely accepted at this Qdoba and that even the staff members here know what Project Burrito is and that if the customer is not swiping their own rewards card [ask] ‘Oh do you want to swipe for this, it’s a good cause,’” Bala said. “I just hope when people go to Qdoba it’s in the back of their mind.”
If feedback from the Northeastern community is any indication, that could soon be the case. Freshman undeclared student, Charlton Mulauri, said he would be open to using the reward card if he knew more clearly how it worked.
“I like it, not sure how well it will work,” he said. “[It] needs people to talk about it.”
Project Burrito is currently Bala’s sole focus for community service, but he has other ideas for food-related philanthropy. He wants to work on creating a non-profit that would leverage restaurant reservations. High-end restaurants, he explains, would donate reservations to the organization that would in turn sell them for five or ten dollars as a way of generating funds for good works. Right now, though, it’s all about Qdoba.
“I’ve always liked helping people and this is just a pretty easy way,” Bala said. “It was like the idea just fell in my lap so I thought that just with a little bit of effort, why not go out and help people?”
Photo by Scotty Schenck
