Caitlin McGrath-Levesque remembers everything about that night.
The orange glow of the fireplace. The texture of the octopus on the plate in front of her. The families scattered across tables at Tuscan Kitchen, smiling over shared meals and promises of future nights such as these.
She remembers how she felt when she watched her sister, Meghan McGrath-Harriman, answer a call from the Portland police, the sparkle leaving her eyes instantaneously when the voice on the other end relayed the sobering news.
Caitlin knew.
“It’s Bobby. He’s dead,” Meghan said.
Bobby “Red” McGrath was only 29.
As the two youngest of the four McGrath siblings, Caitlin had always felt closest to Bobby.
“We were typical siblings,” she said of their relationship growing up in Connecticut. “It was a love-hate relationship for sure, but as we grew up, that just really turned into a bond of love.”
Caitlin eventually moved to Portsmouth after college and Bobby moved in with her briefly before settling in Portland. Her favorite memories with Bobby revolve around food, like the time they spontaneously drove to Philadelphia to pick up cheesesteaks, or when they would start a summer day with lunch at Union Lobster House before an afternoon of kayaking on the Piscataqua River.
Caitlin remembers stopping at Union Lobster House in 2014 to visit Bobby at work, when he first casually floated the idea that paved the way for what would become Red’s Good Vibes, a nonprofit which believes in “radical giving without limits,” a concept upheld by their commitment to providing free meals for Seacoast residents in need.
“It began as a joke. We were talking about how he really needed something of his own one day, maybe a clam shack.”
Then, almost offhand, Bobby said, “It’s gotta be a food truck.”
“In that moment, the conversation shifted,” Caitlin said. “From there, the dream started to take shape -- not just about food, but about his purpose.”
From his time volunteering at Portland’s Preble Street Food Pantry, Bobby believed everyone deserved a hot meal, but he felt “uncomfortable” with the hierarchy setup of the food pantry. With his food truck, he envisioned customers flashing a card that would ensure a volunteer handing them a free meal in a non-judgmental, no-questions-asked fashion.
Bobby didn’t live long enough to see his dream come to fruition.
Again, Caitlin just knew.
One day in late 2019, while driving along Lafayette Road in North Hampton, N.H., the entire vision for Bobby’s food truck flashed before her eyes. She pulled over and came face-to-face with a red 1984 P-40 Step Van with a FOR SALE sign plastered on the windshield.
Caitlin said she never carries cash, but that day she found $300 in her car and walked over – sobbing – to the owner to negotiate a deal. Caitlin asked him how much for the vehicle, and he said $1,000.
After hearing Caitlin explain the situation – from Bobby’s tragic death to his food truck dream -- the owner relented. He took the $300, delivered the truck to Caitlin’s house free of charge, and then she and her siblings immediately started the nonprofit paperwork for Red’s Good Vibes.
The original vision?
Hand out delicious meals from the food truck for free. No income requirements. No questions asked. No judgment.
The food truck (a different one – the original never left the garage) eventually made its debut in 2022, thanks largely to help from generous donors to cover $17,000 worth of renovations, plus crucial handiwork from Hart Plumbing (Dover, N.H.) and the Dover Regional Career Technical Center.
Today, Red’s has two food trucks, and Caitlin and her dedicated team of volunteers regularly bring the trucks to different locations in Dover, Rochester, Hampton and Portsmouth.
They’ve handed out approximately 550,000 meals, often serving goodies like pulled pork sliders, lasagna, tacos, and chicken wraps, with a vegetarian option always on the menu as well.
After over half a million meals served, hundreds of thousands of dollars raised, and countless lives on the Seacoast touched through the food trucks, what does Caitlin think Bobby would say if he were still alive to have witnessed it all?
“Good people are so rad.”
For more information visit redsgoodvibes.com