It didn’t take a pandemic for retailers Himanshu Goel and Theresa Enigl to donate supplies to their community. The owners of the American Petroleum convenience store in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. have provided soup, pasta, scarfs, gloves and more during the winter for the past few years. But they developed a new strategy when COVID-19 began to take its toll. “When the pandemic started, we just decided to do more,” says Enigl. American Petroleum has pledged to donate more than 3,000 “blessing boxes” to its community for COVID-19 relief. These boxes, handed out at local churches, contain food products such as cereal, fruit snacks, peanut butter and rice, as well as general merchandise products including lotion, toothpaste and toothbrushes. The community response to the program has been “breathtaking,” Goel says. “People message us about donating their own food,” he says. “People have been giving us money and dropping off their own food at the store. Thousands share our posts on social media. It has been amazing. “Our plan is to keep doing what we are doing until this is all over,” Goel says.
Himanshu Goel and Theresa Enigl provided soup, pasta, scarves, gloves and more during the winter for the past few years.