Lincoln City Outlets Donates To Taft Culinary Program

Lincoln City Outlets was happy to continue with their annual sponsorship of the 21st  Stuff-a-Bus event in 2019.  With the charitable organization, Business for Excellence in Youth, the organization saw the largest donations from the local Lincoln City community in the history of this event. 

This year, Lincoln City Outlets connected with Kitchen Collection in hopes of receiving items for the culinary class at Taft High School.  When Kitchen Collection heard about these national award winning students, they knew they could help and committed to a donation.  Sharyn Jasmer Marketing Manager for the Lincoln City Outlets approached Julia Westbrook, instructor for the culinary class at Taft 7-12 for a wish-list of items for her class. 

Kitchen Collection came through with over $1,000 worth of knives, cutting boards, mixing bowls and cooking thermometers. When Lincoln City Outlets heard the class needed saucepans, squeeze bottles and various other items, we contributed another $300 to get each kitchen station outfitted for the year.  We are passionate about the community we live in and serve.  Providing the necessary tools for helping this class to succeed was a joy.  

Westbrook said "we are very grateful for the donations, especially the knives, we did not have enough for each student to use before. Now everyone will be able to have the utensils that they need." She said the skills they are learning through the program will help them in many aspects of their future such as time management and problem solving.

Taft Culinary Students, Julia Westbrook and Sharyn Jasmer ( photo by Kiera Morgan)

This year, Jasmer said they had great participation and donations from the following Lincoln City Outlets stores:  Lincoln City Gifts, Nike Factory Store, Hanesbrands, Maidenform, Harry & David, Old Navy Outlet, Columbia Factory Store, fuego, Tools & More!, Justice, Eager Beaver Furniture & Mattress and the Itinerant Artists Marketplace. 

To encourage donations, each week during the month of August, Lincoln City Outlets gave away a $100 gift card, 2 glass floats made by local Artist Kelly Howard and a pair of passes to the new aerial park donated by Salishan Resort.  Lincoln City Outlets matched donations up to $2,000.  Jasmer said their customers graciously donated more than $2,000 worth of supplies and merchandise which helped stuff the buss on August 30.