Visit Lake County Partners Give Back During the COVID-19 Crisis
By: Jonathan Jones 04/15/2020
Whether our partners create eats, drinks, provide breathtaking adventures and everything in between, Lake County's businesses are going above and beyond the #AllinIllinois initiative.
Visit Lake County's partners are giving back during this COVID-19 crisis, devoting their time and energy in the ways they know how.
These partners are dedicating their work as health care workers and first responders battle the novel coronavirus.
We appreciate your efforts!
Let's take a look at some of the heroes to the heroes as Visit Lake County Partners give back during the COVID-19 crisis.
The Deer Park restaurant partnered with The Shepherd's Circle "Meals for Heroes" to help provide packaged lunches for the health care workers at Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital. Since starting the program, nearly 4,000 meals have been served. Biaggi's Ristorante Italiano is also open for pickup during this trying time.
The Highland Park café's business model is about giving back to the community. The non-profit eatery is a workforce training program that mostly works with high at-risk young adults ages 15-to-24. Cultivating Unique Restaurant Training or Curt's has closed its doors after beginning the stay-at-home order open to the public. However, these masons aren't riding out the novel coronavirus pandemic at home, because they're at Curt's continuing making eats. Curt's Café is creating 2,227 meals out of their back door to feed homeless shelters and underserved people. The Highland Park eatery continues to cater to those forgotten during this crisis.
Brushwood Center on the site of Edward L. Ryerson Conservation Area, assembled fabrics and instructions for volunteers to create facial shields for Illinois and Lake County first responders. These volunteers stitched over 1,000 masks for 10 different health care facilities in the Land of Lincoln, including seven places in Lake County. The Riverwoods plans to continue facemask assembly once a new shipment of fabrics arrives.
Brave Betty is doing her best to keep others safe and healthy. Ten dollars of every Betty sold will be donated to support the great work of Caring Women Connection. Brave Betty The Bunny is an 11-ounce solid chocolate rabbit with a protective face mask. Ms. Betty cost $20.
The Highwood distillery is focusing its efforts on fulfilling hand sanitizer orders solely for the area’s first responders and retail partners. While they are preparing washables for the medical industry, law enforcement and other realms, they have also created “Prohibition 2020” cocktails to go. Each to-go cocktail contains 4.5 servings. The salty dog comes with two bottles of Three Cents pink grapefruit soda and some of distillery’s homemade citrus salt for the rim. Twenty-eight mile also features the French, cosmopolitan, winter fools, pink gin, negroni, vodka gimlet, passion and lemon drop martinis (they have temporarily halted creating cocktails to create a sanitizer).
Show them your taillights and pop shop and go - meaning shop online at a Long Grove participating business or call to place your orders, drive up and pop your trunk, where orders are placed safely in your vehicle and go home to enjoy. The historic downtown has created a list of business statuses/ShopPopGo. during this time and will be updating regularly with hours of operation as well as other relevant news pertaining to the impact of COVID-19 to the Long Grove community. #LovinLongGrove and #ShopPopGo.
Lake County Government and United Way of Lake County are seeking the assistance of volunteers to help coordinate the local response for the novel coronavirus. Volunteering opportunities include serving meals to the homeless, delivering meals to seniors, providing general office support and more. The unison effort also joined forces to create the Lake County COVID-19 Community Response Fund. United Way and the land of lakes government supports local non-profit organizations serving Lake County's most vulnerable neighbors. The fund unites monies raised by Lake County philanthropies, corporations, and individuals to disbursed to organizations serving on the front lines of the pandemic and provides essential resources to the most at-risk dwellers of Lake County.
Buffalo Creek Brewing Co. has prepared a survival kit for those first responders in the Long Grove Fire Department. The assortment of essentials includes two packs of beers from Buffalo Creek, sweet treats Long Grove Confectionery Co., oils and dripping herbs from The Olive Tap and three other participating cuisine makers.
Green Oaks, Libertyville, Mundelein Vernon Hills Chamber of Commerce is helping feed our incredible frontline warriors at Advocate Condell - Libertyville and also supporting the local restaurants. Currently, GLMV has provided 200 meals with additional deliveries scheduled.
Instead of doing carryout services, the Lake Zurich distillery decided to put different contents in the still. It wasn’t gin, whiskey, or vodka this time, it was to create a hand sanitizer concoction. As of last week, the distillery provided nearly 100 bottles of sanitizer for police and fire departments in the area. It usually takes around seven days to make a supply, but the Lake County Libation Trail team utilized 45 cases of unsold bottles of rum to accelerate the process.
North Shore Distillery is getting their hands in the hand sanitizer-making business. The Green Oaks distillery is utilizing the FDA rules and the WHO’s recipe and is aiming to have the sanitizer available as much as possible for pickup orders. The priority of these sanitizer requests is going to first responders, health care workers and others providing critical series (some which they are donating to). North Shore Distillery is Illinois's first craft distillery.
At the beginning of the curbside pickup and delivery age, the Barrington mainstay initiated Meals for Heroes to help donate lunch and dinner meals for Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington.
The resort in Gurnee donated a batch of much needed personal protective equipment (PPE) to Hillcrest Nursing Center. The Gurnee health care center received an abundance of gloves and some of the sweet treats made by bakers at Great Wolf Lodge.
O'Toole's of Libertyville had an of fare when they received the order that all restaurants had to close their dine-in experience a little under a month ago. However, O'toole's prepared the eats and packed the grocery bags to give to first responders last Saturday. The MainStreet Libertyville distributed 350 bags of food to employees, industry workers and first responders. About 150 individuals came to grab the grocery bags and the remainder of the grocery bags were taken to local food pantries.
