Columbia Restaurant’s annual Community Harvest program is back for the month of September. Throughout the month, diners at Columbia Restaurant will have a chance to choose a charity for the restaurant to donate five percent of the guest’s lunch or dinner bill to the charity of their choice.
There are several Columbia Restaurant locations located throughout the state of Florida, including a St. Augustine location, located at 98 Saint George St. The original Columbia Restaurant was founded in Tampa’s historic Ybor City in 1905 by Cuban Immigrant Casimiro Hernandez, Sr.
The restaurant is the oldest continuous operating restaurant in the state of Florida.
Diners can choose from over a dozen local non-profit organizations including the Betty Griffin House, St. Augustine Humane Society, Take Stock in Children, Community Hospice of Northeast Florida, 2 Hearts Adoption Ministry, Boy Scouts of America, Dreams Come True, Florida School For the Deaf & The Blind, Friends of the Library, J.P. Hall Children’s Charities, Laundry Project, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Moffitt Cancer Center, St. Gerard Campus and St. Johns Council on Aging.
“We started this program in 1998 as a way to help many of the worthy non-profit groups that are so important to our communities,” Richard Gonzmart, fourth generation family member and president of Columbia Restaurant said in a news release. “We thought the best way to do this was by letting our customers get involved in selecting the organizations. The process is simple. They just put a check mark next to one of the charitable organizations listed on a form we provide. They turn it in to their server. We do the rest, and donate five percent to charity.”
Since the inception of the program, Columbia Restaurant Community Harvest has donated more than $1.6 million to non-profit organizations throughout Florida. The program is now in its 18th year.
For more information about the Community Harvest program, visit www.columbiarestaurant.com.
