(Left to Right) - Melissa Richards-Person, Luca Bianconcini, Dawn Bianconcini, Gary Fox, Dan Thomas
SERVING THE SERVERS
APRON INC. SUPPORTS STRUGGLING RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES Writer / Angela Boggs Photography Provided
business restrictions began, that number has raised in two days, and another $20,000 grown to include 382 grants. was given.
APRON Inc., a local 501(c)(3) nonprofit that helps local restaurant employees with financial issues due to issues such as illness or injury, is needed now more than ever in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Louisville has been so giving - both corporations and individuals,” Fox says. “We keep emergency backup for floods and fires, but nothing like this. Because of gifts and grants, we’re so lucky to live in Louisville and be part of this community.”
Gary Fox, president of APRON, says the organization was founded after a fundraiser was held for a chef that had fallen on hard times due to a serious accident. As a result, community leaders began considering a charity grant model for those working at independent restaurants and small businesses. This idea was taken to late chef and restaurateur Dean Corbett, and he wrote a check. In eight years the group has awarded 230 grants totaling approximately $240,000. In the few months since coronavirus-related
Fox says the typical maximum grant has been $1,500, or about one month’s worth of bills, to help those who have suffered a fire or hospitalization, but now the typical grant is about $500.
“People are giving $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, bigger gifts than we’ve ever gotten, and sweet, wonderful people send $5 individual donations,” he adds. “It’s very heartwarming. We still need ongoing donations, and there are still people out of work, whose unemployment could be running out. We’ll be giving for COVID for quite some time. The need never stops.” Fox says the Taste of Independents event, which features some of Louisville’s top eateries and is co-organized by APRON leaders, was scheduled for July of this year, but was put on hold due to the pandemic.
“It’s something, a little weight off the shoulders for the month - so many people are out of work in the restaurant business in Kentucky,” says Fox, describing a lawyer Ellen Gill McCarty, a local chef and former whose client donated an anonymous gift of owner of Science Hill Inn in Shelbyville, a $20,000 matching fund. That amount was is battling cancer for the third time, AUGUST 2020
