When the pandemic forced Daisy Li to shutter her longtime Moonstar Buffet in 2020, she didn't walk away from the kitchen — she turned it into an emergency meal operation now supplying an average of 4,500 meals a day to seniors, unhoused people, children, and families across San Francisco, San Mateo County, and Santa Clara County.
Li's transformation from restaurateur to nonprofit founder is detailed in a report from CBS News, which traces how Moonstar Buffet — which operated in San Francisco and Daly City for 30 years — became the foundation for Moonstar Charitable Organization, the nonprofit Li formed in 2021. Before the pandemic hit, Li had already built an 8,000-square-foot kitchen in South San Francisco, infrastructure that made her rapid pivot to emergency meal production possible once the dining room closed for good.
From Seafood Buffet to Senior Nutrition Pioneer
Li's move into food assistance didn't start with COVID-19. According to background compiled by the Daly City Colma Chamber of Commerce, Li and her husband, Chef Paul Ng, first opened Moonstar in 1991 as an upscale seafood buffet on San Francisco's Market Street before relocating to a 400-seat facility in Daly City in 2006. In 2015, Li launched MoonChef, a venture built specifically to prepare affordable, culturally friendly meals for senior citizens.
According to the California Department of Aging, the Older Americans Act Title III C-2 Home-Delivered Nutrition Program provides nutritious meals via home delivery or to-go meals to individuals aged 60 or older. According to the California Department of Aging, investments in home-delivered and congregate meals increased by $52.5 million (ongoing) to support the nutrition needs of older adults.
That senior-focused groundwork mattered later. When the Daly City restaurant closed at the end of its lease in February 2021, catering operations were able to continue thanks to the South San Francisco central kitchen, according to a 2021 report from SFGATE. Moonstar Charitable Organization has aimed to scale meal production to 350,000 meals a year.
A Lifeline for Smaller Nonprofits
Moonstar now functions less like a single food pantry and more like a central production hub, cooking and packing more than 2,000 meals a week for nonprofit partners. In East Palo Alto, Onyxx Village Connection gave away more than 30,000 Moonstar meals last year alone. Thandiwe Jennifer Lyons of Onyxx Village Connection said Moonstar is the organization's lifeline, per the CBS News report.
Ariel Ng, Li's stepdaughter and Moonstar's executive director, has watched the organization grow from crisis response into something more permanent. “Something beautiful came out of Moonstar Buffet's forced closure,” Ng said. For Li herself, the work carries a personal meaning beyond logistics: “By giving food, I'm really giving my love at the same time,” she said, describing the meals as an extension of care for the people receiving them.
Fitting Into a Bigger Regional Crisis
Moonstar's daily output lands inside a much larger regional food insecurity problem. Second Harvest of Silicon Valley distributes roughly 125 million pounds of food per year across Santa Clara and San Mateo counties and serves one in six people in those counties each month, according to the organization's own figures. A survey the food bank released in May found that nearly 90% of surveyed households with children in Silicon Valley worry about running out of nutritious food — even though 63% of those households had at least one working member.
Regional food bank data cited by Second Harvest of Silicon Valley indicates that roughly 1 in 6 people across the two counties relies on charitable food assistance to meet basic monthly nutritional needs. That backdrop helps explain why prepared, ready-to-eat meals like the ones Moonstar produces fill a niche distinct from traditional grocery pantries, especially for seniors and families who may lack the ability to cook for themselves.
Expanding Into Disaster Relief and a New Pantry
Moonstar's role is also expanding beyond day-to-day meal delivery. The organization's food pantry will support San Mateo County's emergency food relief plan in the event of a disaster, according to the CBS News report. Li plans to open a new food pantry this fall in the building next to Moonstar Charitable Organization's South San Francisco kitchen, extending her reach even further into the county she's served for decades.
