The Caring Place, a downtown Allentown nonprofit that helps at-risk kids in the Lehigh Valley, has been innovative in finding ways to pay its bills as public dollars have shrunk.
The organization has become a landlord, renting floors if its building at 931 W. Hamilton St. to businesses and a food truck to street vendors. A business incubator, providing a commercial kitchen for entrepreneurial bakers and startup chefs. And a retailer, starting the Caring Coffee Cafe deli in 2007.
The coffee café caught my attention recently when it was changed to a soul food restaurant named Taste of Soul at The Caring Coffee Café.
I applaud the change since we know soul food restaurants are a rare commodity in the Lehigh Valley. We've witnessed a few that closed in recent years, nearly depleting collard greens and fried whiting from the region's dining options.
The new soul food eatery adds to Allentown's diverse Restaurant Row.
Taste of Soul uses part of The Caring Place's commercial kitchen and is run by volunteers, including chef Mick Lewis, who owned a soul food restaurant in Allentown in the 1990s. Taste of Soul's menu includes fried chicken, fish po boy sandwiches, smothered pork chops and sides like candied yams, baked beans, cabbage and rice with black-eyed peas.
The sit-down restaurant also offers takeout and a breakfast menu that includes eggs, grits, Belgium waffles and veggie omelets.
Mary Griffin, founder and executive director of The Caring Place, says the new restaurant offers more variety for the area while ensuring the nonprofit gets revenue from more than public funds.
The Caring Place was forced to close for a month and a half in 2010 when it lost a grant from the state Department of Education due to what Griffin called a computer glitch. The organization, which also teaches job skills, offers free after-school and summer programs and operates a medical clinic, reopened with the help of donations.
Now, onto Bethlehem, which recently lost a retailer.
The staple Bethlehem anglers spot Mac's Hobby Hall is going out of business.
The peddler of fishing equipment, bait, model airplanes and train sets is closing because of the passing in January of longtime owner Elva L. Shuck, said her daughter, Lisa Ebner.
Shuck owned and operated the shop at 721 Linden St. for 21 years. Mac's dates to the early 1940s, Ebner said.
Ebner her brother Robert Shuck and other relatives have been working full-time jobs while trying to keep the shop running, said Ebner, who is the Kutztown postmaster.
But maintaining the shop has been a bit cumbersome, so they're packing it up.
The 1,400-square-foot shop is a mosh of everything from tackle to hard-to-find pieces for train sets and model airplanes.
Do you miss ShopRite?
The popular New Jersey-based grocer believes the Lehigh Valley does since there are plans to return its namesake to the region after a decade hiatus.
ShopRite, known for its annual Can-Can Sale, plans to open a store in fall 2013 at 4717 Freemansburg Ave., Bethlehem Township, the grocer's website noted on Monday.
The location has since been removed from the website.
