Milledgeville Chili's raises $4,000 for St. Jude

Oct 01, 2008 (The Union-Recorder - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- EAT | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- It's difficult to say how often Abby Adams eats at the Milledgeville Chili's restaurant -- but it's a pretty good bet that she'll remember this last time.

Adams, president of the Baldwin High School Beta Club, along with a small handful of other BHS Beta Club members and Beta Club advisors, presented the Milledgeville Chili's restaurant Monday with a check for $1,575 -- all of which will eventually make its way into the possession of the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

"This is the first time Beta Club has done this. We are a service organization, and this is our first service project of the year," Adams said.

For the past five years, the Chili's restaurant chain has partnered with St. Jude to set aside a certain date where participating restaurants provide the day's profits to St. Jude to combat childhood cancer. Monday was this year's day.

"This takes place at Chili's across the nation," Dexter Ricks, operating partner with Bonnaroo Restaurant Group, the managing company behind Milledgeville Chili's, said Monday. "Today is going pretty well, especially with the check from Baldwin High School's Beta Club."

The $1,575 from the Beta Club was collected from teachers, who received donations from faculty, staff and students (along with a few friends and outside members of the community) over a two-week period, according to Chad Bugg, co-sponsor of BHS Beta Club.

"At the end of the first week we had $100. By the end of the second week, we had $1,575," Bugg said. "We even had one student who brought in $100."

The BHS Beta Club is also working with the 2009 Baldwin County Relay For Life and plans to hold several fundraising events over the next several months, according to Adams.

The Milledgeville Chili's raised more than $4,000 between the BHS donation and regular sales donated to St. Jude, according to Tabitha Cullens, manager of Milledgeville Chili's.

"The final total was more than $4,000. That's good. That's really good. We were actually up 27.5 percent in our daily sales. We had about $1,500 to $2,000 more than we usually did," Cullens said.

In addition to donating profits from Monday's sales, the Milledgeville Chili's has also been participating in the national restaurant chain's "Create-A-Pepper to Fight Childhood Cancer campaign," providing coloring pages that feature the Chili's pepper logo.

For a small fee, participants would purchase the coloring page, fill it in and return it to the restaurant.

Chili's also sold keychains for $5 and T-shirts for $12, all of the proceeds of which will also be provided to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

"Chili's has pledged $50 million over the next ten years as a corporation," Ricks said.

As of Tuesday evening, the St. Jude Web site was still encouraging Internet users to visit www.createapepper.com to make an online donation to St. Jude through Chili's.

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