Stores, Restaurants Join Relief Efforts With Giveaways and Free Meals
Concluding that good will is good business, dozens of area retailers and restaurateurs are offering special credit, discounts and free merchandise and food to the thousands of Southern Californians who suffered losses in the recent firestorms.
Merchants said their relief offers are meant simply to help people replace lost items, but they acknowledged that such efforts sometimes help build customer loyalty in the long term.
“We’re motivated by good will,” said Elizabeth Krogh, a spokeswoman for Bullock’s, “but if you’re there when people are in need, they tend to remember. It’s a way to build relationships. Businesses are rushing to help restore communities.”
Bullock’s and the Broadway department store chain are offering fire victims discounts, interest-free deferred-payment programs and expanded credit. The Broadway has also set up a gift registry for victims. Nordstrom, J.C. Penney and I. Magnin are also among department store chains providing assistance to fire victims.
Some retailers are donating cash to relief efforts. The Red Cross has received $25,000 from Robinsons-May and $100,000 from Mervyn’s, which is also among the retailers offering free gift certificates to fire victims.
As a result, Mervyn’s has picked up at least one new customer. Teri Shannon, who lost all her belongings when fire swept through her Pasadena Glen neighborhood last week, used a $50 Mervyn’s certificate to buy some replacement clothes.
“I had not purchased clothing from Mervyn’s before,” Shannon said. “I’ll be shopping for clothing at Mervyn’s in the future. It’s overwhelming when people who don’t know you try to help. It may sound maudlin, but I’m grateful, and I actually believe I’m fortunate.”
“We want to be responsive to communities,” said Ann Barkelew, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis-based Dayton Hudson Corp., operator of Mervyn’s and Target.
She added that it also can pay business dividends down the road. “If you help restore a community, it has to help your business eventually,” she said.
Ken McEldowney, director of the San Francisco-based advocacy group Consumer Action, took a more cynical view.
“It didn’t take the retailers long to look at the demographics of fire victims and realize that these are lucrative markets to tap,” McEldowney said. “I think it’s very important that anyone who has suffered through a fire should not make hasty decisions on purchases. People are very vulnerable after losses and are very susceptible to sales pitches.”
A number of other retailers are giving merchandise to relief organizations in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Neiman Marcus’ Newport Beach store distributed 5,000 items of clothing to fire victims in Laguna Beach and expects to distribute 6,000 more garments later this week. Thrifty Drug Stores is donating basic supplies such as aspirin, soap and toothpaste to the Red Cross. Eastman Kodak Co. is giving away single-use cameras to families who have lost their homes.
Vons Cos. is among those who have donated food to Gladstone’s 4 Fish, a restaurant near the devastation in Malibu. Gladstone’s has given away about 500 meals to fire victims, firefighters and police officers since the inferno erupted in Malibu, said Kerri Jones, manager of the restaurant. Gladstone’s on Tuesday allowed about 10 people displaced by fires to stay overnight at the restaurant.
Laguna Beach restaurateur Michael Kang’s prescription for disaster recovery started with prime rib and worked its way through Chinese chicken salad and beef stroganoff.
Kang, along with nearly a dozen of Laguna’s other premier restaurant owners and chefs, opened their restaurants to the fire victims and gave out coupons for free meals.
“These are our friends,” said Kang, who owns Five Feet restaurant. “At this time of their stressful life, it would be nice to simply get a decent meal.”
Times staff writer Greg Johnson in Orange County contributed to this report.
