Mark Bucher | Source | Founder at Feed the Fridge

Mark Bucher is co-owner of Medium Rare, the iconic, highly-acclaimed D.C. area steak and frites restaurant with locations in Bethesda, Cleveland Park, and Arlington. His mission is to make meal security a reality — first for his Washington, D.C. metro community, and then across the nation. Bucher created Feed the Fridge to combat hunger while helping pandemic-batter restaurants stay in business. Through the program, Bucher places refrigerators at recreation centers and schools across the region and pays local restaurants to stock them with up to 100 fresh meals per day.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Bucher has provided more than 150,000 free meals to those dealing with food insecurity in the nation’s capital, distributed weekdays, weekends, and especially during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. His efforts have been profiled by numerous national and regional media outlets including The Washington Post, MSNBC, and FOX News.

Before co-founding Medium Rare in 2011, Mark owned a chain of burger restaurants, BGR: The Burger Joint. Prior to working in the restaurant industry, he pursued a commercial real estate career, specializing in retail. This led him to restaurant real estate, working for or representing retail heavyweights like Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Wolfgang Puck Restaurants, PF Chang’s, and Outback Steakhouse – just to name a few.