Cookie Till from Margate's Steve & Cookies Restaurant & Oyster Bar knows how a natural disaster like the Los Angeles wildfires can affect the restaurant industry and its workers.

When Hurricane Sandy struck South Jersey just before Halloween 2012, Steve & Cookies at 9700 Amherst Avenue in Margate was flooded with over 2 feet of water, ruining the furnishings, popping floorboards, and effectively killing every piece of equipment in the place.

She certainly remembers how the hurricane affected her workers and how many workers came forward to pitch in and help rebuild the restaurant and get it back open two months later.

Cookie Till's Businesses Pitch In to Help LA Restaurant Workers

Steve & Cookies, along with her coffee and bakery shop Ventnor 7311, the Ventnor deli Florida Cold Cuts, and Reed's Farm in Egg Harbor Township will all be donating profits from one item to benefit California's food and beverage workers who have been impacted by the LA fires.

The week of Jan 20-26, all profits from the Ventnor 7311 morning cookie, Steve & Cookie's seafood pan roast, Florida Cold Cuts' notorious fig, and Reed's Farms' chocolate chip cookie will be directly donated to the Restaurant Care Resilience Fund.

The non-profit organization Restaurants Care gives small business grants, and offers relief funding to food and beverage workers in crisis, helping the servers, cooks, and dishwashers at the heart of restaurants with grants of up to $2,500.

Keep that in mind this week and think about patronizing one of these fine businesses and help with this great cause!

LA Fires Impact on Area Restaurants

The online magazine, LA Eater.com says the combination of the fires and mandatory evacuations has crippled the local restaurant industry.

Even so, many of the restaurants have remained open to make food to feed first responders, firefighters, and evacuees.

Several local restaurants have been blogging about their dire situation since the fires began.

Pez Coastal Kitchen in Pasadena lost 85 percent of our business over the last week. It’s been heartbreaking for our staff...

 

As soon as we saw the fires breaking out, we closed Ronan in Melrose on Tuesday and Wednesday. Once we reopened, we found that no one was going out. Our covers dropped by 60 to 70 percent. Everyone has this eerie sense of wanting to be home, safe, inside, and away from bad air quality.

 

 

Two Hommés in Inglewood served hundreds of meals to fire victims in Pasadena last week. Customers are not coming in. A lot are displaced or don’t feel right leaving the house. We kind of feel the same way. Some people can’t even afford this right now or even think about having a good dinner. But staff need to get paid. We just did our remodel and took out a personal loan to cover it.

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