Murphy & Murphy 7th annual Charity Golf and Dinner event cancelled

The seventh annual fundraiser benefiting the Fallbrook Food Pantry has been cancelled. It was expected to net the pantry over $100,000 this August. FFP Executive Director Shae Gawlik said, “This is a major blow to our organization which feeds over 2500 households monthly throughout the year. We are scrambling to overcome this.”

Chris Murphy of Murphy & Murphy Southern California Realty expressed his disappointment that it wasn’t going to work out this year. “It’s so important and it’s a really fun event. We had our themes and marketing planned and the skyrocketing cost of food this year was our first roadblock. In order to match last year’s menu it was going to cost us $80 per person which was over double last year’s cost. Then the cost of golf increased out of the realm of possibility as well. People are generous, but we couldn’t see charging hundreds of dollars with a reduction in profit. It just didn’t make sense,” said Murphy.

“It wasn’t the restaurant’s fault or the golf club. It was more a problem with what the state and federal government has done to these businesses. They’ve paid their employees to stay home and now they want increased wages to come back to work. One owner said the employees are wanting $20 an hour plus tips and their business couldn’t afford it. Restaurants have gone out of business because of what they’ve done,” he continued.

“The family owned businesses who don’t depend on employees have family members to help them survive. This COVID thing has just rocked the food service industry and it’s made it very tough for us to do the same type of fundraiser this year. We still support the food pantry and deeply believe in their mission to not let anyone in our community go hungry. I would encourage everyone to donate to the mission so we can still come out of this strong.”

The many opportunities to volunteer and donate can be found at https://www.fallbrookfoodpantry.org/ .