Today: Essence Donates 100% of Lunch Special

​It's never too early in the day to start obsessing about lunch when you're heading to Tempe's Essence Bakery Cafe, where chef-owner Eugenia Theodosopoulos creates fantastic soups, sandwiches, and salads to compliment the day's array of fresh croissants, macarons, and other pastries. Each week, she sends out a email newsletter previewing the week's daily specials, and it's enough to make you grab your calendar and start booking lunch dates.

Today, Theodosopoulos is using the daily special as a means to donate to St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance. All proceeds from the sale of the special -- warm organic chicken sandwich with French Brie and apricot marmalade on toasted focaccia, with French lentil and organic vegetable soup -- will go to St. Mary's Community Kitchen Program. Community Kitchen offers food service industry training to low-income adults through a 16-week, hands-on program that feeds the hungry.

Getting your grub on and helping a great local cause? It's a lovely kind of multitasking.