Businesses hit by winter storm get help from anonymous donor offering free drinks and meals
An anonymous donor is helping Fremont businesses offer customers free meals and drinks
By Alex Whitney
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FREMONT, Nebraska (KMTV) — Almost a week after the blizzard customers across the Metro have mostly had their power restored.
But for folks out in the more rural areas, like Tammy Morales who lives west of Fremont, it wasn’t until Monday night that her lights turned back on.
“Oh I was wondering what I am gonna do, with my food and all that thats at my house. Wasn’t able to save it,” said Morales.
On Tuesday Tammy joined dozens of her neighbors, many of whom also only just got their power recently restored, for a meal at Reinitia Restaurant in downtown Fremont.
But this time, the tacos were free of charge,
“I was thinking how can we support our downtown business not knowing when power will be back. Then I had this person reach out to me Sunday night and they were like hey, here is a list of businesses I have already talked to. Here is what we will do can you help me promote?,” said Lainey Paquette, Executive Director for Main Street of Fremont.
That generous donor, who asked to remain anonymous, helped fund hundreds of free tacos, ice cream dishes, coffees, more lunches and even free beer at Five.O Brewing.
The idea was simple, help Fremonters after a tough week and help local shops get people in the door after losing several days of business.
“Losing a day of business is losing your mortgage, your gas bill, your utilities for your store or even at home. Not only did they lose thousands in sales over the week they also lost inventory a lot of them.” said Paquette.
“It hurt us financially a lot. And just the not knowing, the uncertainty of it all was hard to deal with,” said Amy Ellis, manager of Milady Coffee House in downtown Fremont.
Ellis said Milady had to throw out nearly their entire inventory after the shop lost power last week and remained without power over the weekend.
The anonymous donation means Milady can offer Fremonters 100 free drinks on Thursday morning.
They hope that the free treat will encourage folks to spend a little extra and help them get started on the road to recovery.
“Yea they get a free coffee but they might also get a pastry. And then a sandwich, or they might bring their friends. It’s helping us and helping all of the businesses downtown,” said Ellis.
And for folks like Tammy, the free drinks and meals are a reminder that even when times get tough, the neighbors in Dodge County have each other’s backs.
“All the help thats been for everybody, it’s really nice to see and have for all of us,” said Morales.
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