SoCal Santa Clause

Wing Lam, Co Founder of Wahoos and California Love Drop. Wahoo’s | Courtesy

How the Wahoo’s co-founder gives back to the community year-round

On April 12, 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Wahoo’s Fish Taco Wing Lam, co-founder of the Costa Mesa restaurant called up his friends to help him to deliver meals to the Hoag Hospital in Irvine, California.

“It was kinda scary at first,” Lam says. “The idea of seeing sick people, nobody wanted to do it.” 

Masked up and ready to go, they delivered 300 meals to the front door of the hospital, placing the meals on gurneys to be wheeled in.

It didn’t stop there. Lam and his team kept delivering to hospitals, schools and fire departments all across Orange County. Lam’s friends who knew fire fighters or police officers would suggest more places for them to send meals to.

“You name it, we went,” he says. “Everytime we would go to one place, they’d be like, ‘well can we go there?’ I’m like, ‘Why not?’”

To get funding for more meals, Lam partnered up with the KLOS radio show hosts Heidi Hamilton, Frank Kramer and Ellis Island Entertainment CEO Wendy Ellis to call attention to their listeners about what Lam and his volunteers were up to and to raise money. And thus, the California Love Drop organization was created.

As the lockdown in SoCal grew longer in the coming months,Lam persevered, keeping the California Love Drop alive by partnering with companies that were struggling themselves and had unused product from canceled events or the closing of their stores.

Yogurtland, one of Wing’s first partners with Love Drop, helped in the pandemic by adding small cups of yogurt that otherwise would have been thrown out to Lam’s deliveries. The drinkware brand Yeti donated unsold water bottles from drive-in movie theater events.

California Love Drop would deliver to places that very few people were visiting because of the risk of COVID-19, such as senior citizen homes, people working the graveyard shift and other first responders.

“People would be like, ‘are you crazy?’” Lam says. “And I’m like, is there anything else going on?”

More companies like Loan Depot and Cliff Bar poured money into California Love Drop and donated supplies to keep Lam and his team operational.

“They’d give us more than we needed so we could pay it forward,” he says. “We just kept going. We always use a little bit for that and the rest for the next one that can’t afford it.”

After 2021 with the pandemic restrictions lifted, California Love Drop continues to deliver to hospitals and fire departments now more as a “thank you” to their hard work. This month, Lam plans to be at blood drives and deliveries at female cancer centers at University of California, Irvine Medical. The same goes for Movember, men’s prostate cancer awareness month.

Throughout the years of California Love Drop’s, the charity has partnered with many companies and other charities to add to their deliveries and to participate at their events, handing out meals and swag bags. 

For these events, Lam prioritizes awareness and works with Kramer and Hamilton on their radio show at KLOS to spread the word about the different charity events they’ll be attending. 

“The more people are aware, the more money you’re gonna make,” Lam says, recalling the impact that Love Drop and KLOS made at the Ben Did Go 9.0 paddle-out event in Catalina.

They raised the most money ever recorded a month prior by egging on participants to donate more money for how long they were going to paddle.

California Love Drop makes an effort to reach all kinds of events. They delivered meals to the troops at Camp Pendleton coming back after six years in the military, working with Working Wardrobe, a charity that provides suits and formal wear for troops looking to get normal jobs. 

The California Love Drop operates year-round, searching for more ways to help out in the community.

“There’s no shortage of us doing something,” Lam says. “Whatever it is that they need to do, we are there to help them.”

Lam was introduced to the charity world somewhat by accident. In the early days of running Wahoo’s Fish Taco with his two brothers Ed and Mingo Lee, he always “gravitated to the event side” he says. Whether it be a skate competition or a beach cleanup, Lam knew these events needed something: food.

To this day, The California Love Drop organization has delivered 70,052 meals across California, with 82 companies and 36 charities involved in their work. As the co-founder of both a Fish Taco chain restaurant and a successful charity, Wing Lam still makes time to have his own fun.

“I surf, I go running a little bit, hit some golf balls on the weekends,” Lam says. “You gotta have a little bit of fun. All of this without fun, doesn’t work.”

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