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SDG&E donates $200,000 to help local restaurants

SAN DIEGO – The California Restaurant Foundation, a nonprofit that invests in and empowers California’s restaurants and its workforce, has received a $200,000 shareholder-funded charitable grant from San Diego Gas & Electric for its new Resilience Fund.

The fund will support $2,000 grants to single-unit restaurants in San Diego County with priority given to restaurants owned by women and people of color. SDG&E has partnered with SoCalGas, Pacific Gas & Electric and others to provide $1.25 million in support to restaurants in eight counties in California, including San Diego.

“Not only do these diverse, family-owned restaurants add to the cultural vibrancy of our neighborhoods, they are engines of the local economy,” Todd Cahill, SDG&E’s director of customer care and California Restaurant Association San Diego County Chapter board member, said. “Unfortunately, they are also among the businesses hardest hit by the pandemic. We hope these funds will help to accelerate their recovery and that of the industry as a whole.”

Grants given by CRF’s Restaurants Care Resilience Fund are intended to be used on payroll and related expenses such as additional hours for workers and new hires. Additionally, restaurants that receive a Resilience Fund grant will also receive support services and resources to improve their business for the long term.

Over the past year, through the nonprofit’s Restaurants Care program, CRF helped nearly 1,200 restaurant workers, their families and businesses and said that by investing in the lasting success of these restaurants, they can also preserve jobs and communities throughout California.

“What’s really unique about our Resilience Fund is that it supports the business as well as individual restaurant workers,” Alycia Harshfield, executive director of the California Restaurant Foundation, said. “A portion of the funds raised will provide grants for cooks, servers, dishwashers and more who face unforeseen hardship and have nowhere else to turn. So yes, we’re helping restaurants keep their crew on payroll, while also offering a safety net for when things get tough.”

Resilience Fund applications will be open April 11-18, and can be found at http://www.restaurantscare.org/resilience. Grants will be available to single-unit, California-based restaurants in the following counties: Alameda, Fresno, Kern, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and San Joaquin with a staff of 50 or fewer employees.

To qualify, the restaurant must currently be open and have experienced a revenue loss of at least 20% from 2019-2020.

The Resilience Fund is currently accepting additional support from corporations, foundations, and individuals who want to aid in the restaurant recovery. Donations of all sizes are accepted and celebrated at http://www.restaurantscare.org/resilience.

“Our mission is to care for the people at the heart of restaurants,” Harshfield said. “Given the extraordinary circumstances brought on by the pandemic, we recognized a need to help restaurant businesses stay open and keep their crews employed. While we’re hopeful to see restaurants open up and COVID cases drop, the recovery will take years and we’re doing what we can to help.”

For more information about Restaurants Care or the Resilience Fund, visit http://www.restaurantscare.org. To learn more about SDG&E visit http://www.sdge.com.

Submitted by San Diego Gas & Electric.

 

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