Photo: Mud Puddle Farms / Facebook

By Abby Zieverink

Soup it forward

Local restaurant matching soup sales with donations Nov. 17/18

Nov 16, 2021 | 1:55 PM

On November 17 and 18, the owners of Mud Puddle Farm and Rustic Kitchen are matching all soup sales by donating a mix of hot and freezer soups to those in need.

Co-Owner Sue Bouchard says they are doing their own ‘Soup it Forward Day’ as a way to thank the community on their one-year anniversary of being opened.

“We make soup every day, so we wanted to do something (and) give back to the community. We think it’s important when you have a business somewhere to do that.”

A combination of hot and freezer soups will be donated to the Saint Lawrence Centre and Helping Hands of Grande Prairie.

Bouchard says with them making a new, fresh soup every day, there is always extra, which is what led them to the decision to donate it to those in need in the community.

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“The premise of our business is that if the soup doesn’t sell, we can put it in the freezer and sell it to somebody at a more convenient time.”

Bouchard says when there’s an abundance of soup, they thought to themselves to donate it in hopes of helping everyone to have food on the table.

“We just wanted to give back. When we started the restaurant, we wanted to make sure everybody was fed.”

In March 2020, Bouchard says they took part in National Soup it Forward Day, where they donated over $300 worth of soup to the Odyssey House and Wapiti House in Grande Prairie.

“We took a full pot of hot soup over to the Rotary (Wapiti) House,” she said.

“We do singles of our soup in the freezer, so we took 20 of those plus single-sized freezer meals to bump it up a little to the Odyssey House.”

Bouchard explains they’re doing it a little different this time, by soup matching over the course of two days, in hopes of donating over double the amount from March.

“I know (Helping Hands) were struggling a little while ago with filling the pantry, so I asked if they would take freezer soups,” she added.

Starting in January 2022, Bouchard says the plan is to do the Soup it Forward day on the third Thursday of every month.

“The reason we want to do it every month is so we’re always giving back and always giving fresh soup to anybody who needs it.”

Mud Puddle is located on 99 Street in the Nordic Court building.