People unfamiliar with the restaurant industry may not realize how many restaurants regularly donate food, gift cards, volunteer time, and more to a wide variety of causes in their local communities. In addition to their regular donations, restaurants often get 10 requests or more for donations per week. It’s constant thing.
Take members of Asheville’s Independent Restaurant Association (AIR), one of the largest independent restaurant associations in the nation.
A couple years ago AIR commissioned an in-depth survey of their member restaurants by the Magellan Strategy Group. What they learned, among other things, was that 91% of their members contributed to local charities in 2017. That means food banks, homeless shelters, training programs, fundraisers, and more.
After working with many of these same restaurants over the years, I’d be willing to bet that between the 2017 and 2020 Covid restrictions, the percentage of AIR restaurants donating and the amount they donated either stayed the same – or more likely – increased.
The AIR survey also found that the average financial and in-kind donations for 2017 totaled $19,993 per restaurant, with some giving more than $50,000! Furthermore, that same year, charitable contributions of all AIR members (restaurants and partners) totaled $2.14 million.
“The number is comparable to national figures — the National Restaurant Association estimates that 94 percent of all restaurants (including both independent and chains) donate to charitable groups, with contributions totaling about $3 billion a year. But how do restaurants, which have notoriously slim margins, manage to give so freely of their resources?” Sarah Marshall Marcus, Mountain Xpress
If you’d like a more in-depth answer to that question, read this Mountain Xpress article.
Why am I sharing this information with you? Because when we support restaurants, we are supporting our entire community. With new restrictions all around, and on restaurants in particular, coming this Friday, December 11, 2020 in North Carolina, it’s critical that we ALL support them in whatever way we can.
Order to-go meals, purchase Gift Cards/Certificates, dine inside (if allowed/offered) or outside, leave generous tips if you can. If offered, buy bottles of wine to take home or gift to others. If you’re able, donate directly to restaurant owners. They’ll use it to help their employees or save their business, believe me. And if you can think of anything else, let me know in a comment.
