The Charlottesville 29

Photo by Ian Atkins.

See that check?  It’s not accurate.

Kindness is contagious, you see. In The 2019 Charlottesville 29 Restaurant Auctions, our area’s top restaurants and artisans offered once-in-a-lifetime experiences for whoever pledged the largest donation to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. Though the auctions came to an end last night at Prime 109, our community’s generosity did not. The symbolic check represents the auction’s total benefit to the food bank at end of last night’s bidding. But, even after it was written, that benefit keeps growing.

First, Sussex Farm offered to duplicate its offering for the runner-up in the auction for its Kimchi Forever experience, yielding an additional $1,100 for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.

Then, UVa Men’s Basketball Coach Tony Bennett doubled up, too. Bennett was the feature in Bodo’s Bagels’ Lunch of Champions auction experience, a lunch in the office of the coach of the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champions. This was the final item in last night’s live auction at Prime 109, and, in a thrilling finale, bidders drove the bid all the way above $50,000. This morning, Bennett was so moved to learn of bidders’ generosity that he offered a second experience — one for each of the two leading bidders. In turn, the two bidders will each make a $54,000 donation directly to the food bank.

With these additions, the total benefit to the food bank from The 2019 Charlottesville 29 Restaurant Auctions now exceeds $250,000. Thanks to the efficiency of the food bank, each dollar can create four meals, meaning that, through the auctions, our food community will have provided more than one million meals to our area’s hungry.

Stay tuned for a full report on the amazing effort over the last two months.

Thank you, Charlottesville.