When Her Business Dried Up, This Restaurateur Kept the Locals Fed

Kyleena Falzone took to Facebook Live to help her employees and other residents of her Colorado resort town.

Kyleena Falzone‘s restaurants in the mountain resort town of Crested Butte, Colorado, the Secret Stash and Bonez, together made nearly $6 million in revenue last year. But when Gunnison County issued an order March 16 for all visitors to leave as soon as possible, what looked like the start of another busy spring season came to an abrupt end. She had to lay off 132 of her 140 employees. But while her restaurants likely would have survived the lockdown in hibernation mode, she says, “I couldn’t just sit around.”

Instead, Falzone spent the next three months feeding thousands of out-of-work locals through 11 weeks of farmers’ markets handouts, 83 nights of free dinner kits, and three weeks of free groceries. Using social media, she crowdfunded most of the $100,000-plus effort from people who own second homes in the town. Here’s how she pulled off the initiative, which even inspired a similar project thousands of miles away. 

Engage donors on social media 

Soon after the pandemic shut down tourism, Falzone planned to go shopping in the nearby town of Gunnison, and decided to offer to buy groceries for her Facebook friends. Intending to make a regular post, she accidentally pressed the “live” button, which allows Facebook users to broadcast real-time video to their friends and watch comments. People started giving her their grocery orders, and Falzone found she took to the platform. “I could not believe the power of Facebook Live,” she says. “It just blew up.” 

Inspired by the response to the grocery run and to sales of her restaurants’ pizza kits–local businesses bought hundreds and then donated them–Falzone then kicked off the free food drive in earnest. She began handing out the kits each night, funding them in partthrough donations solicited through Facebook Live broadcasts.

Read more: inc