RICHMOND, Va. — A Richmond restaurant owner won huge on the Meals Community activity clearly show, “Guy’s Grocery Video games,” and shared her winnings with her staff members.
Carena Ives owns Carena’s Jamaican Grille and Jamaica Home Cafe in Richmond.
Ives appeared on the exhibit Wednesday alongside celeb chef and host Man Fieri. Fieri sends four proficient chefs running by way of the aisles in a high-stakes, higher-capabilities grocery shop cooking level of competition, in accordance to the network’s site.
The nearby restaurateur produced a clear sweep and earned a funds prize of $17,500.
Ives made the decision to pay out it forward to her workers immediately after a hard few a long time through the pandemic. She offered them the alternative of an all-expenditure paid trip or a paid out 7 days off to shell out time their households.
“If our aim was not our people today we would’ve lasted just one calendar year, perhaps two years. The actuality is that we saved it stored the get together straight. We built sure that we could maintain our business enterprise and be in organization for a very lengthy time,” Ives explained.
The episode was filmed in August 2021, and Ives closed her places to eat at the conclude of December for her team to take pleasure in the time off. Her staff opted to stay household with their people and consider a paid 7 days off given that the Omicron variant was raging at the time.
“It gave us the option to say thank you to anyone, you fellas worked seriously, genuinely hard. You served build our business. And this is just one little, smaller token of our issues,” Ives defined.
Ives achieved Fieri when he brought the Foodstuff Community demonstrate “Diners, Travel-Ins, and Dives” to her Southside location in 2019. She admitted that she will not cook typically at her dining establishments, but alternatively leaves that accountability to her proficient cooks.
She shared that her most loved aspect of filming the new episode was the connections she built with other chefs.
She sees her mission as a transplant from Jamaica is endorsing her household country’s food and cultures. Ives moved her Jamaica Property Cafe to 416 West Wide Road through the pandemic.
She credits her approximately 60 workforce for her longtime accomplishment in Richmond because 1994.
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