CLEVELAND — A North Ridgeville restaurant recently celebrated a milestone by taking a bite out of school lunch debt in their community.
Between the Bun, a diner and burger joint on Center Ridge Road, recently celebrated the restaurant's first anniversary. Its owners, John and Lacia Rutherford, wanted to mark the occasion by doing something special for the North Ridgeville area.
They decided they wanted to make school lunch debt a thing of the past for local students and posted on social media to tell community members and local businesses about their fundraising effort.
"We told them we want to raise money to pay off school lunches," John Rutherford told 3News. "We didn’t even know honestly this is such a big issue for many children and school systems until after the fundraising event."
John Rutherford said Between the Bun, along with the community's help, raised $1,836 in one day — enough to wipe out all past due balances for school lunches across the entire North Ridgeville school system.
"If you go to school and you have no money for lunch and you have no money in your account, you get like an Uncrustable and a thing of milk," bartender Laura Hartman said. "We're a restaurant. We feed people. We want to make sure that the students and the children in our community are being fed while they are at school."
Between the Bun's owners said they wanted to show that small acts of kindness can go very far.
"The community of North Ridgeville is beautiful," John Rutherford said. "The amount of positivity inside BTB is crazy from our staff and our customers."