🎄SANTA FOR SENIORS DINNER 2025

The heart behind Santa for Seniors goes all the way back to my years in the kitchen with my mama at Julie’s Café. That little restaurant is where I learned everything I know about feeding people. It’s where I learned that food is love, food is connection, and food is how you take care of your community.

Every Thanksgiving, Mom would open our doors and feed anyone who needed a meal. It did not matter if they could pay or not. She put out a full Thanksgiving spread and said:

“If you need to eat, come eat. You are welcome here.”

I remember saying, “Mom, this makes no sense. We aren’t making any money. We deserve a day off.”
She looked at me with that steady mama wisdom and said:

“Tammy, we are blessed to even have this café. We are blessed because this community shows up for us every single day.”

People who can afford to eat out, and the ones who can’t afford to eat at all —
they are all part of this community.
And they might be the ones who need this meal the most. ❤️

She believed that giving back isn’t about being wealthy. It’s about having a heart that notices when someone else is struggling. She always said it only takes one small act of kindness to change someone’s whole day.
That is where The Power of One came from for me.

My mama was a stay-at-home mom who worked part-time at a convenience store. My daddy farmed. We were not affluent. Nothing in our life came easy. Mama volunteered at PEFYA, the Dixie Youth leagues, and state tournaments at Poulston Field — flipping hamburgers with a smile. She ended up with a restaurant investor simply because of her personality and the way she made people feel when they stood in front of her.

She taught me that you do not need money to make a difference.
You need a heart, hard work, and a can-do attitude.
That is how I carved my place in Farmville.
That is how Grateful Fed was born.
That is why I believe so deeply in feeding it forward. 💚

Santa for Seniors is my way of showing gratitude to this community. It is my way of taking care of the people who need it most. Some of our seniors are alone. Some are homebound. Some are surviving on incomes so low that even a holiday meal feels out of reach.

They deserve to feel remembered.
They deserve a taste of home.
They deserve love. 🎁

This dinner is not charity.
It is connection.
It is tradition.
It is dignity.
It is my mama’s spirit living on in every pan of stuffing and every slice of pie.

And it is my promise that as long as I am able, I will keep doing my part to make sure the elders in our community feel valued, loved, and seen. ✨