Southeast Minnesota Veteran-Owned Restaurant Saved by Giving Community
A restaurant in Kellogg, MN called The Front Porch is a veteran-owned restaurant, and, sadly, like many other restaurants, they've been struggling during the pandemic. That is until their community came together to help them out!
Andrew Craw and Heather Packer are the owners of The Front Porch. They also both served in Afghanistan, which is where they fell in love. KTTC writes that Andrew and Heather hosted "a popular Memorial Day backyard cookout" a few years back. Around the same time, they also found out that the bar in town was for sale. So they decided to open up their own restaurant, which they did in 2018.
Then COVID hit. It hit the restaurant business hard, but the financial hardships didn't only come from needing to decrease service but also from medical bills. Their baby girl was born at the end of 2020 and she had to stay in the NICU for a while. They were able to bring her home in December but the medical bills on top of the restaurant business being down was a lot for them to handle.
That's where Heather's twin sister comes in. KTTC says that she started a GoFundMe page to help Heather and Andrew with the medical bills and the bills to keep the restaurant open. Well the community came through and helped them tremendously. Andrew says that the restaurant is community-owned at this point. "'Community owned and operated at this point because this is their bar. This is their bar. We just want to make it the best that we can.'"
They're excited to be able to start serving people in-person again.