MUSKEGON, Mich. — A sweet surprise for a Muskegon bakery owner who recently received some bad news: a set-back that threatened to unravel her plans for the business she just bought.
But thanks to community support and non-profit 'Food Hugs', she's now back on track.
Amber Thompson keeps busy behind the counter, hand-filling the custom creations for which Muskegon mainstay ‘The Only Cannoli’ is best known.
A single mom, Thompson only recently became a bakery owner. Yet amid sweet success…
“My car was stolen,” she related.
Several weeks earlier, thieves had swiped her only means of getting to work from its parking space behind the building.
“This was devastating for her.”
Chef Jenna Arcidiacono owns Amore Trattoria on Alpine and spotted the sad story on social.
“I haven't met her… I just said I want to get a car for a single mom,” Arcidiacono explained. “So, we kind of put the wheels in motion.”
Coming together behind a fellow-foodie through her non-profit, Food Hugs, and the generosity of its donors, the group managed to scrape together enough money to solve the problem, buying Thomspon a new car through an estate sale.
“It's just kind of been a win-win for everyone,” Arcidiacono noted. “Her car was found but it's in pretty bad shape. So it's almost undriveable anyway. So I talked to her daughter, I got her daughter's number through a friend and I said, Hey, do you think your mom would still like this car? She said, Absolutely. There's no way she can fix that.”
13 OYS was on hand for the surprise reveal Monday, a boost Thompson never saw coming.
“That’s your car. We got you a car,” the Food Hugs founder pointed to the Hyundai Sonata out front with a red bow fixed to its hood.
“Oh my gosh, really,” Thompson questioned incredulously.
“Yeah,” Arcidiacono laughed.
A victory lap around the block capped-off the experience.
“The community's been wonderful, but I didn't expect for anybody to be like, okay, here's a car… an entire car with the title and everything,” Thompson gushed.
And when you’re speaking the universal language—food—a cannoli can only equate to ‘thank you.’
Thompson repaid the non-profit’s generosity with love and a fresh batch of sweet treats.
“To know that I have wheels and independence… I will do anything I can going forward to repay it to people and to help this community out as much as they've helped me,” she related.
“People are struggling. We need happy stories. We need people to be kind. We need to remind others to be kind,” Arcidiacono explained. “This is just proof that people can come together and do something really cool for someone else that they don't even know.”
For more information regarding Food Hugs, visit the non-profit’s website.
Consult the Only Cannoli’s Facebook page for its hours and offerings.
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