GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – Cheri’s Place, located at 704 Bellevue Street in Green Bay, has given hundreds of Easter Baskets to families in need every year for the last five years.
“Everybody has hard times, and nobody should suffer for that, so we feel why not get back to the community so we get out 350 to 500 Easter baskets every Easter so on Saturday, March 30, if you or anybody that needs an Easter basket you just come here at 1 o’clock,” said Cheri Skenadore, Owner. “There is no judging, no criteria, and nothing else is needed. All you need to do is come in and grab only one or two Easter baskets, and hopefully, you will have a happy Easter!”
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One thing Skenadore loves more than running her bar is giving back to her faithful customers and the supportive community.
“It’s definitely the customers who make this happen. It’s a lot of work for me and my employees; they are phenomenal, and if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be able to do this,” beamed Skenadore. “What we do is we fill Easter eggs, and we fill them with slips of paper. You can win sweet treats. You can win a mystery box surprise. You can win the golden egg, which you win a bigger prize. You can win entries for a bar tab, Amazon gift cards, Kwik Trip gift cards, hotel overnight stays, and things in that aspect.”
Customers can go into the bar and purchase those eggs for a dollar, and then Skenadore will use that money to buy the baskets and everything inside.
“We’ve been doing this for five years now, and it just hits the heart because I remember,” she said. “I was a single mom at one time, you know, with young children, and there were days I thought to myself, ‘How am I going to do it,’ and I always said if there was a time that I was able to do that, where I was able to help out, then I was going to do so.”
In 5 years, Cheri’s bar is making up to 500 Easter baskets, and Skenadore says she continues to do it for her community and fellow local businesses.
“We try to help small businesses by purchasing gift cards from them to give to my customers,” she explained. “
She also told Local 5’s Samantha Petters that even with all the hard work, it is all worth it to see the impact it has had on the community and how much it has grown.
“In five years, look how much it’s growing,” she said. “Every year it grows and gets bigger and bigger, and that’s from the help of all the customers, all the patrons who come in here.
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“We have a motto here at Cheri’s place, ‘people come in as a stranger, and leave as part of our family,’ and it is a true meaning family because everybody pulls together like family and makes things like this happen,” explained Skenadore. “I always tell people, ‘Yeah, we are a bar, but we’re not all bad. There’s a lot of good, and that is giving back to the community, giving back to the customers.'”
Cheri’s Place has other programs year-round, like back-to-school support and other holiday raffles. To keep up with the bar’s community involvement, visit its Facebook page.
