West Newsmagazine 5-6-20

14 I NEWS I
May 6, 2020
WEST NEWSMAGAZINE
Community organization helps keep local business thriving
By JESSICA MESZAROS
In a time when restaurants and
businesses of all sizes are closing
their doors or reducing their hours,
some communities are coming up
with unique and creative ways to
help local businesses stay afloat.
One business that recently has
seen an outpouring of community
support is the Donut Palace in
Ellisville. In 2018, owners Steve
and Ann Saladin purchased the
business and all of the original
owners’ recipes with the hope of
continuing to offer a product that
the community and they loved.
But by mid-March, as COVID-19 precautions
began to impact area businesses, the
Saladins said they could no longer project
how many donuts to make on any given day.
“All of this was just starting to happen,
and we had no idea how many doughnuts to
make,” Ann said. “We couldn’t guess. We
baked a normal amount of doughnuts [on
March 17] and knew later that morning it
wasn’t going to be a regular day.”
They were left with an abundance of 50
dozen doughnuts.
“That’s how badly and how quickly it
dropped off,” Ann said.
The Saladin family then came up with the
idea of continuing to make a large number
of doughnuts and delivering and donating
Ann and Frank Wittman are joined by one of their sons in
delivering doughnuts around Lemar Park Court in Ellisville.
[Photo by Stephen Chismarich]
the surplus to healthcare institutions.
So far, about 4,000 donuts have been
donated to healthcare workers at Mercy
Hospital, Mercy Hospital South, SSM
Health St. Clare Hospital, Barnes-Jewish
West County Hospital, St. Luke’s Des Peres
Hospital and more.
Amidst these efforts, the family still had
to create curbside and delivery models to
stay in business. In addition to a loss of inshop
traffic, they lost about 30% of their
overall revenue from wholesale agreements
with churches, nursing homes and schools.
“We had to find a way to keep our nose
above water,” Ann said.
While looking for ways to stay in business,
the family began to establish parameters for
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deliveries using its available staff members.
But requests were coming in from
as far away as O’Fallon. Then, a customer
in the Hilltop Village subdivision
in Eureka posed the idea of a neighborhood
ordering system.
“When she asked if she could place
a neighborhood order, I said ‘OK, let’s
talk,’” Ann said. “I told her I needed a
central drop-off location and time.”
The idea spread to another neighborhood
in Eureka that involved 72 families.
After posts on Facebook about the
service gained traffic, Ann Wittman
decided to join in.
Wittman, who was a high school
friend of Ann Saladin, decided to spearhead
neighborhood delivery in Ellisville’s
Lemar Park Court.
Wittman is the neighbor of Ellisville City
Council member Stephen Chismarich, who
describes the process as a team effort between
the family and community members.
“One person in the subdivision sends out
a picture of the order form to all neighbors
and collects orders and money,” Chismarich
said.
The doughnuts are then delivered to the
central contact person by members of the
Saladin family. For the April 19 delivery,
Wittmann and her family delivered the
doughnuts door to door.
Chismarich said those making deliveries
are careful to wear the appropriate protective
gear.
“It’s really heartwarming because the
deliveries come to people’s doors, and the
kids get involved, and it’s really cute and
fun,” Chismarich said.
According to Ann, this neighborhoodcentered
approach has made it possible
for the business to stay open while simultaneously
taking measures that other local
businesses are adopting. Those include staggering
business hours and changing staffing.
In addition to neighborhood deliveries,
Donut Palace is continuing its regular
curbside services. According to Ann, orders
have even started to come from outside
West County, from communities like Fenton.
“These neighborhoods are keeping us
afloat,” Ann said.
According to Chismarich, the system is
one that could be used to help other small
or local businesses currently in the process
of trying to adapt to changing traffic or revenue
flow.
“For the right business and the right model,
it’s the difference between staying open and
having to close,” Chismarich said. “It’s the
community coming together.”
Ann agreed.
“I’ve had people order that say, ‘I don’t
like doughnuts, I just want to support a local
business,’” Ann said. “It’s a stressful time to
be a business owner, I can’t sugarcoat that
… But there’s this feeling of community that
really can’t be overstated.”
NEWS BRIEFS, from page 9
started receiving donations the day of the
public launch on March 31.”
According to its organizers, the impact
of donations has already been actualized.
“Already, we are seeing the impact of the
Urgent Response Fund,” Ross said. “One
patient’s daughter maintains that FaceTime
communications from the hospital, made
possible by iPads purchased through the
Fund, helped her father recover from the
coronavirus. In fact, she was so inspired by
the power of this technology that she went
on to raise $10,000 for the SSM Health
Foundation to purchase iPad minis to distribute
to all ministries.”
To contribute, visit givetossmhealth.org/
urgentreponse.
Local counties team up to
open overflow morgue
The counties of St. Louis, St. Charles,
Franklin and Jefferson opened a “Dignified
Transfer Center” on Tuesday, April 21.
The 29,000-square-foot facility, located
at 4334 Rider Trail North, Building D, in
Earth City, will serve as relief to hospitals,
morgues and funeral homes. It is capable
of holding 1,300 decedents, according to a
press statement issued by St. Louis County.
As of April 30, St. Louis County reported
that the center was accommodating 15
decedents. Six additional individuals had
been through the center and transported
to a crematorium or funeral home, at the
request of family. As of that date, 21 individuals
had entered the Dignified Transfer
Center.
According to the St. Louis County, there
is an average of 28 lives lost each day in St.
Louis County outside of COVID-19. The
overwhelming majority of those deaths are
attributable to natural causes or medical
events. Others are lost to violence, suicide
or overdose.
The capacity that facilities like hospitals,
morgues, and funeral homes have is finite.
This limited space has the potential to be
exhausted when funerals are not being held
in a timely fashion, which could be attributable
to a variety of factors, including, but
not limited to:
• Funeral homes not being able to conduct
the business in the manner they usually
do.
• Families potentially being sick or quarantined
themselves.
• Additional precautions that must be
taken for the funeral professionals and the
families.
• Loved ones delaying the process of
saying goodbye until the pandemic and its
effects [travel and gathering limitations]
end.
The facility was created through memorandums
of understanding between
the counties of St. Louis, St. Charles,
Franklin and Jefferson. Construction
was completed using contracted vendors
from those four counties and the state.
Money allocated for the project has the
possibility of being reimbursed through
federal emergency funding, but this currently
remains unknown. The project’s
construction cost was approximately $2
million.
MISSOURI
Celebrating National
Nurses Week
In recognition of nurses everywhere who
are putting themselves on the front line of
the COVID-19 pandemic, WGU Missouri
is kicking off National Nurses Week – May
6-12 – by launching a Nurse Appreciation
Scholarship.
The fully online, nonprofit university
is offering $50,000 in scholarships to
new students wishing to pursue a CCNEaccredited
Bachelor of Science in Nursing
or Master of Science in Nursing degree, or
a bachelor’s or master’s degree from WGU
in specialties that include healthcare management,
health information management
and more.
Applications can be submitted online at
wgu.edu/financial-aid-tuition/scholarships/
general/nurses-appreciation now through
June 30.
Each Nurses Appreciation Scholarship is
valued at up to $2,500 and applied at $625
per six-month term for up to four terms.
To be eligible, scholarship applicants
must be officially admitted to WGU Missouri,
complete the scholarship application
and be interviewed by a WGU
scholarship counselor. Recipients will
be selected based on academic records,
financial need, readiness for online study
and current competency, among other
considerations. Multiple scholarships will
be awarded.