Supporting Local Restaurants and Generating $1,000 to the Food Bank

Community has always been one of our team's values, but there's nothing like a global pandemic to reinforce just how important it really is.

Two Story Robot joined Postmark's sponsorship program in 2019. They send us money every quarter to support the coordination of fun events for local developers in our community.

We've done laser tag, rock climbing, and this March we'd planned to do a whiskey tasting. However, when COVID-19 started to escalate, it quickly became clear that we couldn't host an in-person event without potentially putting people at risk, so the event was cancelled. But our desire to support our community was still at the forefront of our minds, and if it's one thing our team is never short on, it's ideas! After several iterations, we ended up with the concept for Deliver it Forward.

Deliver it Forward addressed two needs that really resonated with us--supporting the Kamloops Food Bank and supporting other small business owners. We encouraged people to order from locally owned food and beverage establishments, and if they shared a picture of their meal or sent us the receipt, we made a $20 donation to the Kamloops Food Bank on their behalf.

We initially had $500 to donate, but as we neared that total, ARPA Investments caught wind of the initiative and offered to pitch in another $500 to bring our cumulative donation goal to $1000 and add significant weight to the impact of this initiative.

We also wanted to provide people with a list of options for eateries open for business. In our search, we noticed that although many restaurants shared their revised hours and service options on Facebook, people were still repeatedly asking "Which restaurants are open right now?" and "Who's offering delivery?".

This highlighted the need for a clear, concise, thorough, and easy-to-navigate directory for people to reference when in search of culinary options in Kamloops. We put the call out to the community and asked people to share any restaurants, cafes, breweries and wineries still serving customers and any adjustments to those services or hours. While this started as an open-access virtual document that we could whip together exceptionally quickly, we have since moved this resource to its own permanent webpage at www.infinitekamloops.com.

InfiniteKamloops is exactly that- infinitely for Kamloops. It is not just here for the duration of the pandemic. Our intention is that it will continue to serve as a bridge that connects local business owners with their patrons, so, as a community, we can continue to support each other throughout and far beyond any crisis we might endure. We envision creating and focusing on tech community as part of InfiniteKamloops.