Porcupine Dante Club members and volunteers have come together "like a family" to help the non-profit organization stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.
General manager Dominic Flaminio said the pandemic affected the club “tremendously."
Starting from mid-March and up until August, all events, including the British Invasion fundraiser, Bocce League Awards Banquet and the Festa Italiana party, have been cancelled due to COVID-19.
As a banquet hall, the club relies on revenue coming from event bookings. When the provincial restrictions came into place, the organization had to lay off 50 full-time and part-time employees.
With cancelled events and “zero revenue,” the club was on a total “sit down” for about a month and a half, Flaminio said.
“A lot of businesses are in our shoes. These are tough, troubling times.”
“I feel very bad for my employees. I have a soft spot for these guys, I do feel for them,” he said. “I don’t consider them my workers, I consider them my family. I want them back here so we can do what we do best and provide the city of Timmins with some nice authentic Italian food.”
The club applied for a federal loan of $40,000 and decided to be proactive by launching food fundraisers.
With the help of volunteers, the club held two sold-out food drives with 1,100 pounds of sausages and about 100 lasagnas.
The club is now selling meatballs with sauce and is in the process of making cheese ravioli and meat ravioli for sale. There will also be another sausage drive sometime before Father’s Day.
“It’s a lot of work to do fundraisers. If it weren’t for volunteers at the Dante Club, we couldn’t have done this,” Flaminio said.
“There are a lot of good-hearted members here who donate their time and do this because, without them, we wouldn’t make the profit we made because we would have to pay everybody to do it. I’m so appreciative of that.”
Flaminio said the community has been very supportive and receptive to their food drives.
For the restaurant operating, which usually operates on Thursdays and Fridays, their next plans are to start offering a limited dinner menu and curbside takeouts in the next few weeks.
“We are not going to be passive. We’re not going to let COVID stop us. We’re going to do as much as we can legally to survive and push out our food,” Flaminio said.
When the restrictions are lifted, Flaminio said he looks forward to having banquets, weddings and events back at the club and going back to how it was before the pandemic.
Ticketholders for the British Invasion event, which was rescheduled for April 10, 2021, can either ask for a refund, keep their tickets for next year or donate tickets back to the club to support it financially.
