Back in mid-March, we started seeing O Sole Mio step up. At that point, Gina Mazzola and her team, along with 20 other restaurants, organized a fundraiser that raised thousands. 

Every day since then, they have worked to serve every community on Long Island. From donating to hospital workers, to providing meals to school districts, they continuously give while offering delivery and takeout for their loyal customers. 

To top it off, they have been able to keep their staff employed, working together as a team to give back. 

Gina Mazzola recently joined us on Lenard Team Connections to share how O Sole Mio is doing it all. Keep reading for highlights from our talk, or listen to the full conversation here. 

Take us back to mid-March. How did you pivot so quickly?

I was actually in Palm Springs when this started, so I hurried back. And we were making hour by hour changes and decisions based on all this new information, changing the whole dynamic of our restaurant. 

It started with closing down our dining room, which was really sad for us to see that because we're used to seeing and interacting with all our customers. We switched automatically to a curbside, take out, and delivery model, which was also new for us; we never did delivery before. 

We had to be mindful of what was going on and adapt, which we did. And we're just trying to do the best we can right now to keep the changes, and we're hoping to hear some news soon about reopening and how that's gonna look for us and just keep moving with the time.

Tell us more about your customers. 

We just actually had our 17 year anniversary. 

We've seen many faces through the years, we've watched little kids grow up, get married, go off to college. We've celebrated milestones in people's lives with them. 

So to not have that human interaction that we all crave and that we miss, it's pretty hard to go through that right now. And we're really missing our customers. I hear from them: texts, phone calls, through our Facebook page. We're always in contact with as many as we can. And we really appreciate ones that are still coming in and doing you know the curbside and weekend delivery - all the support.

Where have you been donating over the past several weeks?

When this first started, our natural instinct was to think, ‘okay, we're in this community, who are we going to help?’ We want to be supportive to anyone that we can be supportive to. 

So, immediately within the first two weeks, I think we fed over 1000 healthcare workers in hospitals. 

We did Stony Brook, Mather, St. Charles, St. Catherine’s, the Long Island Veterans Home, Good Samaritan Hospital. So we started with that.

We actually teamed up with some great local companies and community people to deliver as far out as New Hyde Park, we went to LIJ. We were at Winthrop in Mineola, Huntington Hospital, St. Francis. So we've really been trying to spread it out across the whole Island.

Who is making the deliveries?

One big thing for us when this all started was how do we keep our guys working? Because, you know, we have almost 40 workers that have families that we just want to keep everyone there if we can. So our servers have become delivery people who've been delivering all over Long Island for us, and making all those things happen. So I really am grateful for my team right now. Because without all of them we wouldn't be able to do what we've been doing. 

You're managing all of this - takeout, delivery, keeping in touch with your customers, and donating - how are you doing all of this?

So I'm actually quarantining at home. So I've been able to use this time to focus on organizing all these efforts. And then my partners are at the restaurant and all the workers. 

We've all been doing our part to come together as a team. 

I don't think if I was in the store, physically, I would be able to do the amount of stuff that we've been putting together. So I'm grateful for this time. I think I'm working a lot more at home than they usually do at the restaurant, which is pretty ironic.

Early on, you got together with a bunch of restaurants to raise money. Can you tell us about that?

So funny thing - you know all your best ideas come in the shower. The majority of the restaurants that I was able to bring together - there were 20 of us - are friends. When I'm not working, I'm in their restaurants or vice versa. 

People might think we're all in competition with each other, but everybody loves food. 

And there are so many people and so many restaurants. One day you might want fast food one day you might want fine dining, so we all have to succeed. I like to see us all come together right now in this time and do something that can help us all together.

It was a great contest. We were able to raise $15,000 between all the restaurants and gift cards to help us out right now. So I'm grateful for everyone's support.

That's tremendous. It's not only a reflection on you, it's a reflection on our community. How can people get involved and support everything that you're doing?

Well, right now, if you want to reach out to us, we're doing most of our communications to our Facebook page, our O Sole Mio Facebook page. I'm constantly on there reading messages in my inbox. You can call us at the restaurant, the number 631-751-1600. And, we will definitely get back to everybody. We're trying to do the best we can, and we've responded to every single email and call. 

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