OXFORD, N.C. — The owners of Strong Arm Kitchen and Bakery are giving back to the community after a customer nominated the bakery for a national competition, and they won.
What You Need to Know
Strong Arm Kitchen and Bakery won $25,000 as part of a national business award
The owners decided to use the money to kickstart a $100,000 fundraiser for the local Boys & Girls Club
They hope to raise all the money by December 31
The money will go toward a $1.1 million renovation of the Boys & Girls Club in Oxford
Julia and Thomas Blaine started their business in their home kitchen and opened their Oxford storefront in 2020, but their personal connections to the town go back to their childhoods.
“We all enjoy what we do. We all really like to eat really good food. It's fun to make really good food and feed it to your community. I can't think of anything else I'd rather do than serve people in that way,” Julia Blaine said.
Their business started a few years ago, and they were selling just a few loaves of bread a week, but they’ve grown a lot since then.
“We ship cookie boxes all over the country for the holidays, and we're just getting some last-minute orders, and we’re trying to get them out now. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's like bakery Olympics right now,” Thomas Blaine said.
Thomas and Julia Blaine had been planning on opening a physical location and just happened to do so months after the pandemic began.
“Strong Arm moving into Oxford wasn't necessarily the plan from the get go, but the community let us know that they were going to do everything they could to keep us here,” Julia Blaine said.
They both graduated from high school in Oxford, and they take pride in those roots.
“We feel really lucky where we are right now. So much of what we do is really tied to our community. Our brand is tied to Oxford. All of our boxes say Oxford on them. What we do here, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for everybody here,” Thomas Blaine said.
Earlier this year a customer took notice of the business and nominated it for the Rush Limbaugh Great American Business Award. Lo and behold, they won.
“It was shocking obviously,” Julia Blaine said.
Even more shocking: the $25,000 cash prize.
“It felt like something fell out of the sky. We just felt like we should try to do something big with it,” Thomas Blaine said.
They thought of ways they could use the money for their family or reinvest back into Strong Arm, but it didn’t feel right.
“We talked about going on a $25,000 vacation, but then you just come home after that and you’re home. So if you have something that has a lasting impact, it would be really nice to do that,” Thomas Blaine said.
They settled on donating every dollar back to Oxford, kickstarting a $100,000 fundraiser for the local Boys & Girls Club.
“There's a million things that we could spend a whole lot of money on, but there's not a million things that could have such a huge impact as where we did want to send that money,” Julia Blaine said.
A thriving business, run by entrepreneurs from the Oxford community, giving back to the place that’s given them so much.
“Every turn that we take, we feel like we are supported and nourished, and we want to make sure that other parts in our community are feeling that too,” Julia Blaine said. “We decided with that $25,000 that we have been so well supported by our community here and what you really want to see going forward is more growth and strength built in our community, and the best way to do that right now would be to focus on the Boys & Girls Club and start empowering that next generation of people that are about to come up.”
Thomas and Julia Blaine say their goal is to fund raise the $100,000 for the Boys & Girls Club by the end of the year, but regardless of the final number, they’re still donating the entire $25,000 prize to the cause.
The $100,000 fundraiser will help with a massive renovation at the Boys & Girls Club in Oxford. The Club already has plans for a multi-phase renovation. The organization moved into a massive warehouse in 2016 but haven’t been able to renovate it yet.
The first phase is a $1.1 million project to renovate one side of the building, including learning spaces, technology and much more. The Boys & Girls Club in Oxford serves as many as 300 to 400 kids throughout the year, and the club’s CEO says it’s a vital resource for the area.
“It's important because those out-of-school times, those times in the summer when kids aren’t in school, are critical. If you look at any statistics, those hours between 3 and 6 p.m. though there's a lot of crime for juveniles so to be able to provide a place for them to come to negate any of those negative trends is important to the success of an entire community,” Donyell “DJ” Jones, the CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs North Central North Carolina, said.
“I'm a club kid myself. I went to a club in Southeast Raleigh, and for me the club was everything. It was the place we all wanted to be and needed to be. As I look back, that’s where we needed to be because it kept me out of the streets and in a positive place and also exposed me to a lot of different opportunities that I probably wouldn't have been exposed to without the club,” Jones said. “As I look back on my years at the Boys & Girls Club, it was my lifesaver. I wouldn't be here today without the Boys & Girls Club, and the positive influence it had on my life.”
Jones says construction on phase one should start in the spring or summer of 2022 and be complete in about a year.
To learn more about the fundraiser for the Boys & Girls Club, visit Strong Arm Kitchen and Bakery’s fundraising website.