Stockholm’s Restaurant and Brewery in downtown Geneva might be closed after a kitchen fire, but its employees can rest easy knowing they will continue to get paid, at least for a while.
After the fire on Aug. 1, the restaurant set up a GoFundMe campaign asking people to donate so that it could continue to pay its employees even as the restaurant is closed and recovering from the fire.
On Friday, six days after the campaign started, it had already raised over $37,000 from nearly 300 separate donations, above and beyond the campaign’s goal of raising just $25,000.
After taxes and fees are taken out, that money will give employees about two weeks of regular pay as the restaurant remains closed, according to restaurant marketing manager Rebecca Moore.
“It’s an odd, humbling feeling to kind of put your hand out and say, ‘Can you help me?’ But we thought we had to at least take a chance,” Moore said. “We did not, in a million years, expect the kind of attention that its received.”
The GoFundMe campaign page says that all of the donations will go directly to staff to help pay for necessities like rent, groceries and medical bills.
Moore said there was an “outpouring of support” from the community after the fire, both for the GoFundMe campaign and on the night of the fire.
It was staff from the nearby Niche Restaurant that first spotted smoke coming from the building on Aug. 1 and rushed into Stockholm’s to warn those still inside.
According to Moore, Stockholm’s kitchen staff had already gone home for the night, leaving the basement kitchen empty as, upstairs, bartenders served their last guests of the night and prepared to close up.
But a broiler in the basement kitchen had been left on, which started the fire, she said.
One of the bartenders called 911 while the other ran downstairs and tried to fight the fire with a fire extinguisher, which firefighters said helped keep the fire from being worse than it was, Moore said.
Still, the fire did “rather extensive” damage, according to Stockholm’s Facebook post about the fire. No one was hurt in the fire, which was put out by Geneva firefighters within 30 minutes of their arrival at the restaurant, city officials said at the time.
When firefighters arrived, the restaurant across the street, Nobel House, opened back up for Stockholm’s staff so they had a place to drink and relax after escaping the burning building, Moore said.
The fire was a shock to Stockholm’s employees, many of whom have been working at the restaurant for “a really long time,” she said.
“It’s very cliche when I say it, but it’s like a home away from home, basically. It’s like a family,” Moore said.
After receiving community support, both in GoFundMe donations and in encouraging messages about the restaurant’s importance to the community, staff members have been energized and hard at work cleaning out the damage and getting the restaurant ready for repair work, according to Moore.
She said that, while everyone is working hard to get the restaurant back open as soon as possible, it will likely stay closed for at least another two to three months.
“That’s just a guess-timate,” Moore said. “It’s so early, and we haven’t really had any consults with anybody who can give us any real timeline at this point.”
On the upside, the restaurant will be getting a new kitchen since it was heavily damaged by the fire, she said.
“We’ve been around for 22 years, so now it’s like we’re getting reborn,” Moore said. “But, at the same time, you know, wish we didn’t have to go through all this in order for that to happen.”
The restaurant did have insurance, which included money to pay employees for up to 60 days, according to Moore.
However, she said insurance funds often take time to come through, so the money raised from the GoFundMe campaign will hopefully hold over employees until those funds become available.
The GoFundMe campaign was still online and accepting donations as of Friday. To learn more or to donate, go to gofund.me/8bdd9dd6
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
