Giving

Best Local Effort

Andy’s Keeps Special Olympics Free

Andy’s Cheesesteaks and Cheeseburgers is a North Carolina fast-casual, 1950s-style concept that prides itself on being a local attraction. So, it is no surprise that the company’s Founder and President Kenney Moore likes the charitable donations he raises to stay in his own community. With that in mind, Moore’s Andy’s Charitable Foundation donated a portion of its annual golf tournament earnings to the Special Olympics of North Carolina (sonc), allowing the organization to continue offering free sporting events to its participating athletes. SONC has more than 38,000 registered athletes and offers programs for more than 20 sports throughout North Carolina.

“If these athletes are willing to go out and put their time and their energy into it then they should be able to do it for nothing, they should be able to do it for free,” Moore says.

The Andy’s Charitable Foundation annual golf tournament began in 2000. This year the event raised about $120,000.

Best Franchisee-Driven Program

Moe’s Offers Free Child IDs

Along with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Moe’s Southwest Grill called on its franchisees to host Child ID events at various locations. At the events free child identification cards were made, complete with a high-resolution photo and finger print. Each participating franchisee paid $240 for the kits from Polaroid, which make about 150 IDs. Thanks to the 23 stores that have participated since the program’s launch in 2006, more than 1,000 children have received cards.

Based on the program’s success, Senior Director of Marketing Sara Riggsby says hosting similar events is always an option for the future.

“The goal was not to increase sales, but rather create a positive connection with neighbors, and in that regard it was indeed a success,” she says.

Best Beginning

Popeyes Shares Its Lunch Money

“The saying that we use around here is that we feed people for profit,” says Alicia Thompson, Popeyes’ vice president of communications. “And they feed people not for profit. It just fit that we were both in the business of feeding people.”

The fit she refers to is the quick-serve’s partnership with America’s Second Harvest Food Bank this summer. Together they created the “A Side of Hope” virtual food bank program, which raised money for low-income students who lack access to a nutritious lunch during their summer break from school.

Although the program didn’t raise as much money as was originally hoped (it raised less than $5,000), its media coverage reached about 32 million people, according to Thompson.

“We got a lot of awareness which is always a plus when you’re doing a relationship where you want to bring people’s attention to the fact that there are hungry people out there,” she says. “We were pleased with that side of it, now it’s turning that awareness into action.”

In 2008, Popeyes’ will try new ways of drumming up support for the program. “We might look at things like tagging advertising spots if that’s the appropriate manner or ways of bringing it to life within the four walls of the restaurant,” Thompson says.

Best Call to Action

Jody Maroni’s “Make Sausage Not War”

The path to world peace came to Jody Maroni in a dream—or so the story goes. According to Jody Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom’s Executive Vice President Richard Leivenberg, Maroni woke up in the middle of the night and said to no one in particular, “Make sausage not war.”

T-shirts sold at Jody Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom across southern California now bear the “Make Sausage Not War” slogan. At the end of 2007, proceeds from the sale will be donated to the American Red Cross.

“We’re not talking about one particular war, one particular voting group, or anything like that,” Leivenberg says. “It’s the largest universal message you can make, which is ‘Make peace.’ And that’s all we’re really saying, and we’re having fun with it because we’re in the sausage business.”

Best Patriotic Approach

Wayne Farms Feeds Troops

Thirteen Wayne Farms employees celebrated Labor Day with a special group of recruits—American servicemen and -women. The poultry producer’s staff spent the day serving its signature Buffaloos (spicy chicken wings), barbecue chicken sandwiches, and grilled chicken breasts to about 290 traveling soldiers at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. The effort was so well supported by Wayne Farm employees that volunteers had to be turned away.

The company got the idea for the project from its Executive Chef Carline Morris, a member of the American Culinary Federation, which runs a project called Operation Chefs Unite that partners with the United Services Organizations to feed hot meals to soldiers.

The program so moved one woman, whose boyfriend was preparing for his third deployment to Iraq, that she felt compelled to write to Wayne Farms: “There are no words to express how much it means to us to know that others are still thinking and praying for all the troops serving overseas,” she wrote.

Wayne Farms plans to repeat the project on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and July 4 next year.