Restaurant Fund Awards Half Million Dollars to Santa Barbara County Restaurants

A half million dollars in grants went to 71 restaurants in Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley, courtesy of the Elaine F. Stepanek Foundation, which is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The foundation’s Restaurant Fund worked with the Santa Barbara Foundation to distribute grants of up to $10,000 to enable restaurants to open and to help employees as a response to the economic impacts of COVID-19. “We were able to restock our shelves with seafood and produce,” said Kelly Kastanos-Rogers of Louie’s California Bistro at the Upham Hotel, “and we were able to provide our employees with the first paycheck many of them have had in months.”