Dickey’s Barbecue Restaurant owner Jeff Bass loves the Garland community and that love shows through in his commitment to serve its residents.
“I’ve fallen in love with this place,” he said. “It’s home. There’s this wonderful sense of community.”
Earlier this year, Bass provided a meal to Garland’s 250 firefighters and more recently, he fed the city’s 300 police officers. It took multiple days to get to each first responder in both the fire and police departments, but it was worth the effort.
This isn’t the first year Bass has fed all of Garland’s first responders. The first year, he distributed gift certificates to each one but only a few of them were used, so the next time, he switched to box lunches.
Not only did his generous gesture communicate deep gratitude to Garland’s first responders, but it also provided a community service opportunity for other organizations to join in the community service effort. The Dickey Foundation, the Garland Foodies, Julian Olalde with Farmers Insurance and others worked with Bass.
In March, when the news was filled with stories about people being out of work, Bass wanted to help even though his sales were down by 60%. He had never used Facebook before, but he made a video about free meals for people who had been furloughed or laid off, posted it on FB and it got 15,000 views. For two months, he fed 15 people per day who had lost their jobs.
“I love helping people,” Bass said. “After providing meals to people who had lost their jobs, I started thinking about a way to keep the momentum going and that’s when I decided to feed the first responders again. It was a lot of fun and a blessing for me to be able to do something like that.”
Bass was one of four children raised by a single mom and said that having a servant’s heart is in his family.
“Anyone can do what I’m doing,” he said. “Just think of someone who needs something and help find a way to provide it to them.”
His next community service project will be to host a blood drive with Carter Bloodcare. More information to come. Bass’ restaurant is in Garland at 1413 Buckingham Road.
About Dickey Foundation: The Dickey Foundation, formerly known as Barbecue, Boots and Badges, supports first responders in communities across the United States. The foundation provides safety equipment such as helmets, shields, respiratory masks and overall support for local first responders. Although its reach is national, the efforts are extremely local and support several programs including Invest in a Vest. For more information, visit https://www.thedickeyfoundation.org/.
About Dickey’s Barbecue Restaurants, Inc.: Dickey’s Barbecue Restaurants, Inc., the world’s largest barbecue concept, was founded in 1941 by Travis Dickey. For the past 79 years, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit has served millions of guests Legit. Texas. Barbecue.™ At Dickey’s, all our barbecued meats are smoked on-site in a hickory wood-burning pit. Dickey’s proudly believes there’s no shortcut to true barbecue and it’s why they never say BBQ The Dallas-based family-run barbecue franchise offers several slow-smoked meats and wholesome sides with ‘No B.S. (Bad Stuff)’ included. The fast-casual concept has expanded worldwide with two international locations in the UAE and operates over 500 locations in 44 states. In 2016, Dickey’s won first place on Fast Casual’s “Top 100 Movers and Shakers” list and was named a Top 500 Franchise by Entrepreneur in 2018. For more information, visit www.dickeys.com.