Salvatore's Tomato Pies-Sun Prairie

Dear Sun Prairie,

It’s been a rough week and we’re emotionally spent. Our restaurant is now behind a security fence, and can only be accessed with police and fire escort. They call it the hot zone. We can’t even access the building to board up the windows. (Update: we were able to board up windows!)

Everything is as it was when we evacuated on Tuesday. There is food and drinks on every table. No power. I personally can’t help but be reminded of the city of Pompeii. Walking through the restaurant I couldn’t help but notice little vignettes of the time before the earth shook and an explosion took the life of a good man.

An abandoned pizza and pasta dishes on a table. Glasses of wine. A half finished kids Mac and cheese next to a wiki stix project. The air is now becoming redolent of rotten seafood and warm garlic. Our formerly boisterous dining room seems filled with ghosts. During my brief visit I was able to get items that employees left behind during the evacuation.  That’s it. 

We poured not only our lives into this place, but also all of our resources. Seeing it broken, battered and abandoned is heart breaking. This is one of our busiest times of the year and we have no income at the moment. We’re being called every day for food donations and fundraisers, and...We don’t even have a functioning kitchen. But we want to help in any way we can. It’s in our blood!

So Saturday our whole staff will be cooking for first responders and their families after the funeral of Capt. Barr. All of us are pitching in. We’re still trying to round up food even though Wisconsin beef, pork and chicken along with 800 lbs of cheese are going to waste inside  our powerless coolers. The amount of food we will lose  is staggering. But again, we’re safe. It just pains us to not be able to put all of that to good use in the community. But we’ve got commitments for 200 lbs of heritage pork and sausage among other items. We will provide food, and the labor to cook it, in order to feed the bravest of people on Saturday.

We run on fairly slim margins at Sal’s as we proudly use local ingredients and insist upon a labor intensive hand-made food model. We don’t have conveyor belt ovens and bake directly on a brick hearth, with fire. It takes constant attention and skill in order to get good results, but that is the only way we know how to do it. Because of this our expenses are much higher than similar restaurants. And while that is more than ok, it doesn’t leave us with much of a cushion. 

Anyway...what We’re trying to say is that we’re used to giving when asked. Freely and usually without limit. But it’s hard for us right now...and honestly? that isn’t a good feeling. If you’ve got a fundraiser in mind, we’d love to do it. We’d like nothing more than to help. But give us a week or so to hopefully clean up our mess and sort things out. We’re missing way more than half of our income right now
but our expenses remain the same if not more.

Payroll is coming up, Insurance hasn’t kicked in, and we are still reeling from our flood damage that closed us for lunch for two weeks in May. We thought that was a particularly terrible disaster while experiencing it but compared to this? A mere inconvenience. Compared to what some other sun prairie business owners and residents are going through, our current plight is also. 

At this time, we need to take care of our team, and frankly, this is a pretty scary moment for us. We don’t yet know when we can open again. Our tenants remain displaced and the thought of that is also a great weight. 

Thank you, friends, for your support. It means a lot to have heard from so many of you. Your words of encouragement are appreciated. Once we’re operating we want to do something big...to help as many people as we can. But at this moment We can’t even bus our frozen-in-time tables. And we can’t wait to be back to doing what we do best. Sure, we have insurance  but there
will be gaps and some will likely be significant.  We’re used to standing at the head of the line when it comes to giving, so asking for help is hard for us.  A kind friend had started this gofundme, and turned it over otherwise we probably wouldn’t have done it.  We will need some help meeting payroll, taking care of our people, repairs/clean up and with re-start costs once we get back into our building.  Thank you so much for your help.   #sunprairiestrong

Most sincerely,

Patrick, Nichole, John, Madeliene Jon and everyone else at Sal’s.