Do It Local Berks’ Family Meal Popups on TV!
It was an honor to have reporter Tom Rader join us at a Popup at Missy & Sean’s house in Wyomissing to share the success of our neighborhood popups:
WYOMISSING, Pa. – The idea is simple — order your favorite meal from your local go-to restaurant, and swing by to pick it up right in your neighborhood.
It's a pandemic-derived concept from community support organization Do It Local Berks County, which started with 50 food orders, and this week, got 400.
Tom Rader | 69 News
"Hey, we got nothing to lose. Let's try other places and see what we can do, and it's exploding," said Heather Brady, co-founder of the organization. "I thought we'd go for a couple of weeks. Now, we are going on six or seven weeks, I guess it is, and a lot of the restaurants are asking we do it for a whole year."
One of the latest participating restaurants is The Barley Mow on Penn Avenue in West Reading. Owners said the initiative creates yet another method to get food to customers.
Tom Rader | 69 News
"To just pivot how we normally do things, like this is a catered type of event, we don't normally do this," explained Claire Starr, co-owner of The Barley Mow. "So just changing our style has really helped us get through, but it's been tough."
The stand popped up in Wyomissing, but the group moves around.
The pop-ups, which began in December, are giving restaurants ideas for innovative things they can do, even after the pandemic ends.
Tom Rader | 69 News
"Through this, we started doing dinner boxes for each holiday or whatever special event is coming," Starr explained. "We did a prix fixe dinner box and they have been hugely successful, so we will keep that up for sure."
