Original Joe’s helps food bank associations

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

Original Joe’s Restaurants are in partnership for a third consecutive time with Stella Artois, Goose Island Beer Company and Shock Top to donate $0.25 from every pint sold towards the Community Pint program, where proceeds are being donated to the Western Food Bank Associations.
The program is under the umbrella of Original Joe’s Community Cares Fund, which encourages or challenges the restaurants to fundraise for local causes. Aiding in the promotion of the initiative is their motto ‘Down There, Down the Street.’
“We just like being involved in the community in general,” said Blake Chayer, Strathmore’s Original Joe’s managing partner. “It’s local food banks we’re usually involved in, basically things to help the community. [It’s] $0.50 from every pint. This month it’s Goose Island, so we actually contact the brewers first and they donate $0.25 and we donate $0.25.”
Cheyer said they had previously been involved with the Strathmore and District Agricultural Society golf tournament through sponsorship and spoke about the importance of giving back to the community that supports their franchise.
“We get all our business from Strathmore people, so to give back to them, it feels nice,” he said. “I think it tells them that we’re willing to get involved in the community. I don’t know a lot of other restaurants that are doing that. I think branding-wise it holds true to our ‘Down There, Down the Street.'”
Executive Director of Alberta Food Banks, Stephanie Rigby said, that Original Joe’s contacted the National Food banks Canada and indicated their intentions to do something in the western provinces. The discussions led them to contact the provincial associations for support.
“I think in the past they have often done individual charities at each location for the pint program,” said Rigby. “They wanted to try something different. They wanted to do one charity per province for all the locations and see how that worked.
“We were opened to that but a part of that they also wanted to do an event in the restaurants that would benefit the local food bank where the restaurant was located.”
She added after the campaign is over there will be a donation made provincially and then the province’s association will work with 66 food banks, including the Wheatland County Food Bank, and they will provide food, funding, programs and services to the member food banks.
“We can get food and money delivered to the food banks to do their job better,” she said.
There are 66 food banks across Western Canada in the Original Joe’s Pint Program and to date there has been $410,000 raised for the Community Cares Fund.
The breweries’ and Original Joe’s donations will end Jan. 31, 2016.