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March 16 marks the nine-year anniversary of Tap House in Plainfield and the bar and grill at 24402 W Lockport St. in Plainfield is celebrating by helping the community through the COVID-19 pandemic.

With schools being closed around the state, Tap House wants to make sure that every kid is taken care of by providing brown bag lunches available to any K-12 child that is in need.

"We love our community. This is not about us, it's about the community and we are doing what we can to help," said Tap House general manager Katie Appel. "We do a lot of events for children and we are always doing things to give back to the community and this is one more thing. We will have 100 bag lunches. They can come pick up or if there are larger orders, they can call and make sure there are enough. All you have to do is stop by the restaurant and we will have some available."

The brown bag lunch program is the idea of owner Santino Patragas and will be carried out by the Tap House staff beginning at 11 a.m. March 16.

"We have had churches reach out and I have a lot of emails coming through like crazy already," Appel said. "We were around 900 shares on Facebook in the first day, people know somebody. Some kids only eat at school and there is not a lot of food at home. There is no food in the grocery store and sometimes they rely on only school lunches."

Not only will Tap House offer brown bag lunches, kids will eat free all week long from 11-4, not only on Sundays.

Those looking to purchase meals and not wanting to have interaction or handle money can order through the restaurant, pay digitally and pick up curbside, although Tap House is keeping the restaurant sanitary.

"We are taking every precaution possible, we are wiping down the whole table, including the salt and pepper shakers," Appel said. "This is our responsibility."

Tap House is also working on starting its own free delivery service to help people save on Uber Eats fees.

Contact [email protected] with any questions or to schedule a pick up.

"This is going to be a trying couple of weeks and we just want to help the community through this. Any light at the end of the tunnel is a good thing," Appel said.