The National Restaurant Association today honored Kona Kai Coffee Company with its 2011 Restaurant Neighbor Award. The award celebrates outstanding service efforts that restaurateurs perform in their respective communities.
Based in Kent, Wash., Kona Kai Coffee Company was recognized as the Small Business Category winner for helping the homeless and disenfranchised re-enter society and the workforce. The program is the brainchild of Mychal Boiser, Kona Kai’s owner-operator.
“The restaurant industry first and foremost is about hospitality and serving people, and community service is a natural extension of that,” said Dawn Sweeney, National Restaurant Association President and CEO. “We are pleased to present the Restaurant Neighbor Award to some of the most inspiring examples of philanthropy in our industry. Kona Kai’s dedicated efforts to help improve the lives of the neediest members in its community are not only exhilarating, but necessary at this time when so many people’s futures have been met with uncertainty.”
Boiser said he was compelled to start the program, which takes six to eight weeks to complete, in order to offer hope to others and pay back some of the kindness he’d received in his youth when he, himself, had been homeless. The program teaches on-the-job training in the foodservice industry as well as life skills, including tips on customer service, leadership and responsibility, taking direction from others, accepting feedback from supervisors and how to work with a team. At the end of the course, the company helps participants find employment. So far Boiser has raised more than $13,000 through private donations and fundraisers to keep the program running.
The National Restaurant Association presented Kona Kai Coffee Company the award along with a $5,000 charitable contribution during its 2011 Public Affairs Conference in Washington, D.C. American Express is the founding partner of the Restaurant Neighbor Award. It was developed in 1999 in an effort to raise awareness of the industry’s contributions to local communities throughout the country and to inspire more owners and operators to get involved and contribute to their respective neighborhoods.
“American Express is proud to partner with the National Restaurant Association to honor the contributions restaurateurs across the country make to their communities,” said Curtis L. Wilson, Vice President and General Manager, Restaurant and Lodging Industries, American Express. “Through charitable gifts of food, time, and resources, restaurants have a tangible and lasting impact on their communities; we hope these actions inspire others to do the same.”
In addition to Kona Kai Coffee Company, the National Restaurant Association recognized three others with the 2011 Restaurant Neighbor Award. They are: Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, the Pittsburgh-based parent of the national Eat’n Park restaurant chain, in the large business category; Charleston Feed The Need, a consortium composed of 52 Charleston, S.C.-based restaurants, in the mid-size business category; and Michael Whalen, president and chief executive of Moline, Iowa-based Heart of America Restaurants, as this year’s Cornerstone Humanitarian.
For more information on the Restaurant Neighbor Award program as well as the national winners and state finalists, visit the Association’s website, www.restaurant.org/rna.