The Bharat Patel Charitable Trust partners with Heroes & Restaurants to thank community heroes with gift cards to local restaurants
Founding members of the Bharat Patel Charitable Trust include Bharat & Nalini Patel (center), son Jay Patel (left) and Neha Jadhav (not pictured). Jay’s son Devan also joined the family for the photo shoot at Ubon Thai Cuisine in Wilmingon, DE.
Wilmington, DE: A local family with experience in hospitality is extending their own to local restaurants and first responders in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Patel family, including husband and wife Bharat and Nalini, their son Jay, and daughter Neha Jadhav, of the Bharat Patel Charitable Trust, are providing relief to local restaurants and first responders by partnering with Heroes & Restaurants to fund a new gift card component to the existing program. Heroes & Restaurants was established in April of 2020 by West Side Grows Together and multiple private donors in response to the staggering financial losses that restaurants in the area were facing due to the pandemic, intending to give them a boost by paying for catering orders and donating those meals to local essential workplaces.
“COVID hit everybody and our point was to say that we are all in this together... You’re suffering; we’re suffering. We want to help too,” says Neha Jadhav in reference to the restaurant gift card donation initiative, which was piloted independently by Neha and her husband Ajit Jadhav near their home in Warrenton, VA. A town with a population of less than 10,000, Warrenton was the blueprint for their COVID response charitable giving, but it was not the family’s first endeavor in giving back to their community.
In Neha’s father's hometown of Surat, in the State of Gujarat, India, Bharat Patel established the region’s first cancer hospital, the Bharat Cancer Hospital & Research Institute, in 2009. Through the hospital’s Shri Bartimaiyat Memorial Foundation, up to 100% of the cost of treatments is sponsored by the hospital for those who cannot afford it. The foundation was inspired by Bharat Patel’s late father, whom he lost to cancer at a time when life-saving treatment was inaccessible to the region. It is in this vein of serving the most vulnerable that The Patels wished to give back to their adopted home of Delaware, where Patel settled his family and planted roots in pursuit of his career in hospitality in the mid-80s.
Bharat & Nalini Patel
“We had success so we like to give back to society. I always believe society gave us so much... a roof, food, and education,” Patel affirms.
When the Patel family was interested in giving back to their community in Delaware, they connected with Wilmington City Councilman Chris Johnson who was familiar with Heroes & Restaurants and the work of West Side Grows Together as a representative and advocate for the 7th City Council District. Johnson immediately thought it would be a good fit and reached out to the team to conduct an introduction.
“Everyone here in the 7th district and throughout the West Side of Wilmington are grateful for the generosity of the Patel family,” Councilman Johnson reflected. “We look forward to working together with them in future projects, as we look to continue the momentum of building sustainable programs aimed at reinvesting into our most important asset on the West Side: our people.”
With the funding from the Bharat Patel Charitable Trust, Heroes & Restaurants is able to expand its reach to support additional restaurants and feed more community heroes. Many of these “heroes” are among the most vulnerable to the exposure of the pandemic, working in hospitals, testing sites, community centers, and fire & police departments across Wilmington and New Castle County.
John Gope and Wit Milburn of Ubon Thai Cuisine, one of the restaurants benefitting from the Patels’ partnership with Heroes & Restaurants
Additionally, the restaurants participating make up a diverse slice of their neighborhoods, with 47% of participating restaurants owned by people of color and 42% owned by women. At a time when systemic racism is evident down to the way small business relief is doled out, every dollar counts to keep these neighborhood restaurants afloat. The Patels specifically wanted to use the majority of their dollars to support businesses owned by people of color in light of the disproportionate marginalization of the Black and Brown business communities. By sending gift cards from those businesses to first responders, it is their intent to connect the community in a tangible way and say thank you to the place in which they made their home.
Bharat Patel muses about his work, “I’m not a millionaire, but I have a million dollar heart.”
Since its inception, Heroes & Restaurants has donated almost 2,000 meals from nearly 20 restaurants in and around Wilmington. If you would like to get involved, donate, or learn more about the program, visit Heroes & Restaurants on the web, or contact April Pagliassotti at apagliassotti@westsidegrows.org or 302-669-9445.
Follow Heroes & Restaurants on the Web, Facebook & Instagram for more information and program updates.