Help Tilly's Cheesesteaks Staff!
Donation protected
Hey friends!
First, a quick bio about Tilly’s Cheesesteaks (for those who may not know us yet). My wife and I started Tilly’s back in 2016. We’re proudly the first and only cheesesteak joint in RI!
As someone who's been in the food industry for two decades, our main objectives as a restaurant are:
- Paying our team fair living wages alongside flexible schedules
- Creating delicious, well-made cheesesteaks and other mouth watering items made from quality ingredients. Mostly sourced from local farms and businesses! On top of that - most of our items [like our signature queso] are made in house from scratch
- We forever believe in local, honest, fast food
**ALL $8,000 OF THIS FUNDRAISER WILL GO TOWARDS OBLIGATIONS TO OUR STAFF PLUS A SMALL BONUS AS A THANK YOU WHILE WE WORK TO REOPEN**
Anything above the goal will go towards:
- The building’s lease
- Vendors
- Utilities
We absolutely love being a part of our community and want to stick around for as long as we can.
And with this situation we and many others are currently facing; we still believe in the restaurant industry and we still believe that we as a company push growth by using all of our local vendors, farms and community. We definitely think it’s still worth fighting for and hopefully you will too!
Next, Kristen and I need to thank y’all for the immense amount of support and love we’ve received these last few days since updating y’all on the status of Tilly’s. We were completely blown away with all the offers to help. We had many messages and comments saying y’all wanted to donate to a fundraiser. We took the last few days to sit on that idea and think it through end to end and decided it’s needed at this time.
I don’t have to explain to you the devastation Covid has caused and is unfortunately still causing. We’ve been clinging on for dear life and riding the worst roller coaster of our lives. Every single time we think we’ll be able to breathe for even a little bit, another tidal wave comes.
For those not in the food industry and maybe not understanding why things are so difficult for us and so many others - I wanted to show you numbers on some key aspects that have made it very difficult these last nearly two years. Also, please consider these numbers during those times a restaurant is non-operational and not having positive cash flow for even a week here and there (example: needing to close for 1-2 weeks if someone tests positive for Covid).
Since 2020, here are some costs that have gone up. Things are sadly only going to get worse:
- PAPER goods have gone up 40%
- FOOD costs are up 35%
- OPERATION EXPENSES/PAYROLL is up 30%
- We lost $140,000 in 2020 alone due to Covid lockdowns and haven’t been able to catch up even with raising prices across the board by 8% AND that’s rolling into the increase of the cost of goods, food, paper and labor. It’s been a never ending fight that we haven’t been able to win.
To put it this way, because KB’s brain is in never ending analogy mode, it’s like this - there’s a mountain that we as a small business are continuously trying to climb 24/7. Then in 2020, the mountain became a gross muddy mess and we can’t get proper footing what so ever. Juuusssst when we think we’ve made some progress up the mountain towards safety and sustainability, we slide way back down. Then to add to getting knocked down, there’s a mudslide on a nearly monthly basis and we get completely buried and have to feverishly dig our way out to attempt to start climbing all over again. All without rest or time off or else we’re done for.
In conclusion; these initial funds are needed for our staff aka we're in need of some ropes thrown down to us to help us up this muddy mountain ❤️
We thank y'all for your time and your support. Y’all are a part of Team Tilly’s forever!
Stay Cheesy friends ❤️
-Jonathan and Kristen Beres
Organizer
Kristen Beres
Organizer
North Kingstown, RI
