THUNDER BAY — The Social Restaurant raised $9,000 for the Dew Drop Inn through its Burger Extravaganza fundraiser.
For each burger sold in February, $4 was donated to the local charity to aid its Everyone Deserves a Good Meal campaign.
It was the second year for the fundraiser and the restaurant more than doubled it's burger sales, up from 292 burgers to 620 burgers.
“Well, last year, it was just like really experimental, right?” said Theresa Stewart, the restaurant’s owner.
“This year, we kind of have a little bit more of a game plan of what we had planned and we added the extra two burgers to make it a little bit more exciting and yeah, it just kind of took off on its own.”
Although she said they'd expected to do better than last year, she definitely didn’t foresee it getting to this level, which is “pretty exciting.”
“I think one of the things in Thunder Bay is we have so much community support here and I mean, we over-doubled what we did last year,” said Stewart.
She explained that adding the two extra burgers was also one of the biggest things that helped the fundraiser because it added just a little more variety.
“People would come and try one and they’d love it and then they’d be like, ‘You know, what? We got to come back and try the other ones too, right?'” said Stewart
Looking forward, the restaurant intends to continue to do the fundraiser.
“This will be an annual thing. I don’t know if we can ever top $9,000. It would be awesome if we could, but we’ll just keep shooting for the stars,” said Stewart.
Stewart said she was very grateful to everybody who came out and supported the fundraiser.
“We have a lot of monetary donations from other companies, from staff members here. Thunder Bay’s just got such a big heart and it’s just awesome to see people pull together like this,” said Stewart.
Michael Quibell, the director of the Dew Drop Inn, said they were actually very thrilled with this year’s campaign.
“We’re so thankful for the wonderful support from the community. We never expected to sell so many burgers… It’s great. It’s wonderful,” said Quibell.
Of the three burger options offered for the fundraiser, the Wild West Burger sold the most after the returning Smokehouse Hero and the new Tropical Heatwave.
Quibell added that the record is certainly an incentive to aim for a higher amount in upcoming years.
“Community supports such as this allows us to serve a good meal daily, so (the money) will be buying food to serve a meal,” said Quibell
“We’re serving about 425 people a day now and with the high cost of everything, things are very expensive, so monetary donations are very welcome and appreciated.”
He said they also really appreciate and thank everyone who supported this amazing fundraising event in February.
The Social Restaurant hinted it might add another burger next year to get the fundraiser over the $10,000 mark.
