Friday, May. 16, 2008
Car Show Fuels Food Drive
By Brandon P. Murray
Contributing Writer
The event will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. although the British Emporium will be open noon to 5 p.m., said Sheela Kadam, co-owner of British Emporium.
It will feature an all-British car and motorcycle lineup, including Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, Triumph, Lotus, Austin-Healey, Sunbeam and Mini, according to a news release.
The canned-food drive will benefit the Grapevine Relief and Community Exchange (GRACE) Food Pantry program, and donations will be accepted from 11 a.m. until at 5 p.m., Kadam said.
"We never charge any admission for our community events, but we do ask that spectators and participants bring a can of food to collect for GRACE’s Food Pantry," Kadam said.
This is the fifth year the store has sponsored a canned-food drive to benefit GRACE as part of the event, Kadam said.
The British Emporium has a long history of giving back to the community, said Shonda Schaefer, executive director of GRACE.
"They’ve been a longtime supporter of GRACE," Schaefer said. "I think it’s not something you have to do, in terms of contributing and giving back to the community in which you run your business, but the British Emporium has — ever since I can remember — made it a priority to make sure they took care of the underprivileged in the community as well, by way of holding these types of food drives," Schaefer said.
The Food Pantry is one of GRACE’s core programs and is a benefit to area families, she said. The families in need of the Food Pantry’s help are mostly families who live in the Grapevine, Southlake and Colleyville area that have fallen on hard times or some type of emergency, such as the loss of a job or a car that’s not running, which has temporarily taken up all of their financial resources, Schaefer said.
"While dealing with these emergencies, they should still be able to get good, healthy food for their families," she said.
Kadam said she believes that helping community-based relief programs such as GRACE is timely. "Now is more important than ever to help the local food pantries [because of] the prices going up and just the current state of the economy," Kadam said. "The food pantries are trying to help a lot of folks in need so we feel it’s more important in the last few years that we’ve been doing it to help them out."
For details on the car show and food drive, or to register for a space to display a vehicle, call 817-421-2311 or see www.british-emporium.com.
For more information on GRACE programs, see www.gracegrapevine.org.
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