Everyone needs a little help sometimes, after all, we are not meant to go through life alone.
Galatians 6:2 “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
A Wisconsin restaurant owner did exactly that when he used $2,000 of his own money to help local restaurants that are struggling due to the pandemic.
Adolfo Melendez, owner of Tex-Mex restaurant El Mezcal in Stevens Point, purchased more than $2,000 in gift cards to restaurants in his community to raffle off to his customers.
“If you help one person and another person helps another, that will help a lot,” he said. More than 110,000 restaurants across the country have closed temporarily or forever since Dec 1, 2020, because of the pandemic.
“There’s probably 35% of the restaurants that keep struggling a lot here,” Melendez said. He was inspired to do so after a local realtor company helped his restaurant at the beginning of the pandemic.
“They did something where people voted for their favorite restaurant and I got second place so they bought $300 in gift cards from me,” he said. “Right after that, I was like I’ll probably do something similar.”
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Posted by El Mezcal Restaurant Stevens Point on Wednesday, 27 January 2021
If life has given you blessings, then you should share those with your community. Sharing blessings might be as simple speaking with someone or lending emotional support to a person going through a tough time.
Since the end of last year, he bought gift cards from local restaurants in his community and raffled them off to customers on his restaurant’s Facebook page. Winners received a $20 gift card to a local restaurant.
The restaurants were thankful for Melendez’s generosity, and understand that surviving the pandemic means working together. “In these Covid times, it’s very important to eat local, small mom and pop shops,” Pete Ananiadis of Olympia Family Restaurant said. “He understands that, and for all of us right now it’s a tough time.”
For Melendez, it is important to help keep small businesses open during the pandemic because they are the staples of the community, “That’s part of what keeps us alive,” he said. “You can go to Applebee’s, or you can go to Pizza Hut but it ain’t the same like when you go to this little diner or pizza joint.”