Tacos to tote bags: churches partner with small businesses during COVID-19

Dream Center volunteer handing out meals. Taken from the L.A. Dream Center Facebook page.

NEW YORK — In some of the communities hardest hit by the Coronavirus, churches and faith groups are stepping up with creative ways to support local small businesses. 

As lockdowns largely halt the economy, small businesses are bracing for the worst. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one in four small businesses have shut down temporarily during the outbreak and another 40% expect to shut down soon. Forty-three percent think they have less than six months before a permanent shutdown is inevitable. 

In L.A. County, where only 43% of residents are still employed, Matthew Barnett of the Los Angeles Dream Center, an evangelical, residential rehabilitation center with a robust homeless ministry, is looking at the preservation of small businesses as an essential part of caring for the community. 

“They’re our backbone,” he said. “If they go down, we’re all in trouble.” 

As the virus ramped up, unemployment climbed, and the already dense homeless population became more desperate, the Dream Center strategized on how best to help during the crisis. 

Children in the drive-thru food line. Taken from the L.A. Dream Center Facebook page.

Under normal circumstances, the center distributes about 1,200 meals a day. In mid-March, as stay-at-home orders and jobless claims became more widespread, the center served 14,000 meals a day, distributed non-stop through socially distanced drive-thru and walk-up options. 

“It’s like four cars a minute for 11 straight hours,” Barnett said. “We’re open from 7:30 am to 6:30 pm, and there aren’t any breaks in the stream.” 

While many charities and church groups have stepped up to feed the hungry and meet basic needs, Barnett’s vision stretched farther than one-time material aid. 

“The negative ripple effects of the virus are strong,” he said. “We needed some in the other direction.”

In collaboration with Justin Turner and the L.A. Dodgers, who have become central donors to the operation, most of the meals are sourced from local, small businesses on the verge of collapse. 

“We give the food for free, and they keep the jobs alive by buying from places that couldn’t survive this otherwise,” Barnett said. Turner and the Dream Center have partnered with eight local restaurants near Dodger Stadium in L.A. County. 

“As soon as talk of a stay-at-home order started, we lost over 50% of sales like that,” said RJ Liguigan, the owner and operator of Toro Grillhouse, a Fillipino and Mexican fusion restaurant in the area.

When Liguigan heard Turner on the radio discuss his plan to partner with the Dream Center in support of small businesses, he immediately sent the baseball star a direct-message on Instagram. Liguigan knew his business was in trouble, and Turner was quick to respond. 

“Three hours later, he gave me a call to set it up,” Liguigan said. “He asked me what the easiest thing to mass-produce would be, and I said we could probably do tacos. He said, ‘Well why don’t we do that Monday through Friday next week?’”

Each week since, the order has been renewed. After the Friday drop-off, almost like clock work, Liguigan receives another call to discuss the next week’s details. In the weeks since the shutdown began, the Dream Center and Turner have purchased 27,000 tacos from the grillhouse. 

Donated tacos being assembled. Taken from the L.A. Dream Center Facebook page.

“That first week [of the shutdown], my employees and I, we were all really scared. I had to let people go home early, or not take a shift,”  Liguigan said. “Once we got that big order, I didn’t have to cut anybody’s hours anymore.”

Liguigan has tried to apply for a federal Small Business Administration loan through the CARES Act but is not counting on that to come through. After running out of funds, the SBA relaunched its paycheck protection program on April 27, but shortly after its relaunch, bankers (who receive the money in order to lend to business owners) were complaining that some of the SBA’s web portal could not be accessed. Liguigan calls the office every morning to check on the status of his paperwork and is told to just keep checking his email, he said. 

The orders of the Dream Center have made up for about 50% of the restaurant's typical revenue. 

“We’ve had suppliers shut down. Most of the stores near us have shut down. Without this order I honestly think we would have shut down,”  Liguigan said. 

On the other side of the country, in the epicenter of the American outbreak, C3 NYC, an evangelical megachurch with four locations throughout the city, has taken another approach to easing the financial pains of the virus. 

“We had already been doing a COVID relief fund, and had initiatives to support hospitals,” Grace Hazelgrove, a representative of the church said. “But some members of our church had an idea to partner with small businesses.”

Danny Owens and Elena Hart, members of the church, launched an online initiative with the title Support NYC Online, which quickly caught the attention of C3’s lead pastor Josh Kelsey. 

Taken from the C3 NYC Facebook page.

“They brain-stormed how to get the church involved and start marketing this to people, and they came up with the tote bag idea,” Hazelgrove said. 

C3 New York City has financed the production of a line of tote bags to be sold online with the help of C3’s social media platforms. On Instagram, the church has over 23,000 followers. 

The bags are sold for $15 a piece, and with production covered by the church, 100% of the revenues go into a fund to provide grants to small businesses—everything from nail salons to burger joints. 

With open nominations for recipients of the Local Love Gift drawn from the fund, online participants pitch the names of local businesses that have impacted them, everywhere from mid-Manhattan to Staten Island.

“Brooklyn and Manhattan are built off of small businesses… The heart [behind the program] is to shine a light and lift up our neighbors, and bring light and love into the city while so many people are going through different hardships,” Hazelgrove said. 

Liza Vandenboom is a student at The King’s College, an intern at Religion Unplugged, and a religion columnist for the Empire State Tribune.