Everyone can get behind donating to the local food bank, but Bewdley businessman Gus Norman is putting together partnerships that result in literally hundreds of hot meals donated to the Community Works Food Bank in his own community.
Norman has the expertise to make the meals himself – he runs a mobile barbecue catering business, Gus's Grill To Go. And he has used this expertise to support his community before – like when he put his 22-year volunteer firefighting career on hold in 2018 and began to look around for help staging fundraising community dinners.
He got into discussions with the president of the Firefighters' Affiliation about doing a fundraising community dinner. Discussions stalled, but he talked with the affiliation president whom he knew – John Mifsud, whose wife Brandy works with him in the catering business.
He got his own employees on board with donating their time to put these events on maybe two or three times a year. They bought right in, he reported, and his wife Anna-Louise also liked the idea.
Norman went back to Mifsud and submitted a specific request to the affiliation – some sponsorships and a few bodies to help with set-up and clean-up so the brunt of it didn't all fall on his people.
“He talked to his guys, and we made it happen,” he reported.
“They were received extremely well.”
Three or four dinners were staged that first year, raising money for Community Works Food Bank, the FishAbility sports group and Habitat For Humanity Northumberland (who were building a home in Bewdley).
A few more dinners were staged in 2019, and even one in February 2020.
“Then along came our buddy COVID,” he said.
Norman was enlisted back into the Hamilton Township fire department, because they needed more people in the north end of the township – where he lives. But he kept hoping he could do something for the community, and discussed it with Mifsud.
“We scratched our heads trying to figure out how we could get back on track,” he said.
“We talked about a drive-through dinner, but we couldn't use any of the township halls because of COVID.”
The pandemic did result in a healthy demand for their frozen-foods line, dishes like lasagne and shepherd's pie, and his wife thought of donating frozen roast-beef dinners to the food bank.
He asked Community Works about quantity, and they estimated they would need enough for 50 families (130 people in all).
“I had an anonymous sponsor on Facebook – almost half of what we needed – and we made up 130 roast-beef dinners.”
Delivery of the frozen meals was made Dec. 2.
News of the project went out on Facebook, and it came to Kelly Elchuk's attention.
Norman has known Elchuk and his wife Sandra for years, and is one of so many who look forward each Christmas to their big Elchuk Family Musical Christmas Lights display on County Road 9.
The Elchuk family use this giant extravaganza to accept donations of food for the food bank. Now they have teamed up with Norman to collect donations to make another series of meals for food-bank clients possible.
All donations made to the Christmas Lights display will support this plan, and Norman is looking for additional sponsorships.
“I am accepting donations at my business e-mail, as long as they put Donation in the subject line so I can track them,” he said.
“I have $540 in that account already, which means another meal before Christmas,” he said.
With the help of two of their Firefighters Affiliation members who work at Maple Lodge Farms, they have arranged donations of enough chicken to make 130 meat pies. And Norman hopes for this work to go on in 2021.
If you would like to help with this project, put Donations in the subject line and contact Norman at gusgrill2go@gmail.com
