BEEVILLE, Texas — A restaurant in Beeville is putting the city in the national spotlight.
That's right. The Coffee Barrel recently won a $50,000 grant from Chase Sapphire.
This grant is meant to help restaurants that have survived the pandemic. The Coffee Barrel was nominated by several customers because of its community programs.
The Coffee Barrel was one of 2,500 restaurants across the country nominated, and one of 20 restaurants that won!
The nominees were evaluated by four culinary experts on their impact to the community, innovation or creativity during the pandemic, and the nominator's passion for the restaurant.
The owner told us he's grateful to have his business nominated and recognized.
"We are super honored and humbled by this award, not necessarily because the grant monetary value is immense, and can do a lot of great stuff for our community," said Coffee Barrel owner, Dr. Dhaval Patel. "I was just happy because this puts Beeville, Bee County, and South Texas in a national light, which is super important, and it just shows the amount of work we're doing in the community together."
Of the 20 winners of the award, just two winners were not in a major city, or a suburb of a major city, and Beeville is the smallest community represented among the winners.
"Everything we do here is driven by one thing: our vision, which is about sustainable community impact," said Coffee Barrel owner, Dr. Dhaval Patel. "We have 11 community programs going on right now, I'm going to spend that money in a strategic way to grow those programs, and to introduce new ones. We're going to spend some of it to have a great team dinner, thank some people, and celebrate, but the majority of it is all for our community programs."
