Bolly’s preparing for 4th annual dinner

Community meal event serves to feed those who need family for holidays

NEW BREMEN — To give community members a place to be on Christmas Eve, a local restaurant has opened its doors and provided a meal on the holiday.

Bolly’s Restaurant in New Bremen is holding their fourth annual “Bolly’s Christmas Eve Community Meal” this year from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Dec. 24.

Owner Bryan Trego said the event grew out of wanting to do something for families that didn’t have any Christmas Eve plans.

“My mom passed away about four years ago and my family’s pretty small, so on Christmas Eve, it was just basically my mom, wife and kids and sometimes my mother and father-in-law, nothing real big,” he said. After she [my mom] passed, we thought, ‘ There’s got to be other people that don’t have a lot going on on Christmas Eve, so let’s just have a free dinner at Bolly’s,’” Trego said.

“It was for people who didn’t have anywhere else to go on Christmas Eve. If they want to come spend time with people, we were there.”

He realized that there are families struggling financially and this dinner was a way to help out around the holidays.

“We know there’s some people that struggle financially. If people wanted to make donations, they could, but that was a secondary thing,” said Trego. “If they wanted to do that, we absolutely accepted them, but we realized that we have some needy families in the area that we would help out. We would give some to the local churches, too.”

Because of the pandemic, Bolly’s will be offering this year’s meal as carry-out only. Trego said he would have loved to have people eat inside this year, but spacing requirements just wouldn’t allow for it.

“This year, we were afraid we would get too many people because it’s pretty busy,” he said. “The first year, there weren’t as many but after that, people had heard about it. We were afraid that we have fewer tables and we didn’t want people standing around and waiting in line because we’re still trying to social distance.”

Families from the community volunteer to help with the meal and that

has played a big part since it first began, said Trego.

He said that the meal serves as a dedication to the Lane family, whose daughter, Zoe, was killed last year in a car crash.

“Zoe always came in and helped with her dad, Larry,” said Trego. “The Lane family definitely stays involved with helping out to kind of honor Zoe’s memory because it was important for her to help out and we try to dedicate it to her.”

The meal will consist of ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, roll and a dessert.

“The New Bremen coffee shop has volunteered to donate some dessert and stuff. We’ve got people that have stopped in and donated money already. It’s a pretty cool thing and we like doing it,” said Trego. “I wish we could do it where we could spend some more time with people this year but we’ll be back strong next year with it.”

Since the pandemic began, Trego said the community has been supportive of his restaurant.

“With everything with COVID, nothing is consistent. You can expect a Friday night to be busy then you’re slow, and then Saturday night is crazy busy. At the end of the week, we’re still

able to pay our bills and we’re surviving in that sense,” he said. “The community has been so supportive throughout all of this.

“They’ve been awesome for us. We feel very blessed that way. And the employees have been awesome too, adapting to different situations and stuff we’ve had to deal with.”

Trego is asking customers to call ahead at 419- 629-9644 and pre-order by 8 p.m. on Tuesday, or early on Wednesday, so the restaurant can get a ballpark estimate of how many meals they will need to prepare.

There will be no charge; donations will be accepted and given to those in need, said Trego.