October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month
October is coming up quickly! This month starts on Friday and as many of you may know, the whole month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  This entire month we remember and acknowledge all the brave women who are fighting or have lost this battle to breast cancer. Here at Charleston Hospitality Group, we want to shine light on all of these individuals and recognize them for all of their strength and resilience.

Read below to see how our company was able to sponsor charitable initiatives to raise funds for the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center through our charitable initiative, Full Belly Full Hearts last October during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. With the help from our community, employees and guests, our direct donations supported women and individuals who were experiencing this chronic illness. This included support for education, screenings and medical research.

Giving Back To The Community Through Full Belly Full Hearts
Charleston Hospitality Group has always been active in the community, both nationally and locally. The Fully Belly, Full Heart charitable campaign was created in Charleston during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic crisis by our Founder and CEO, Sam Mustafa. As a lover of the hospitality industry and Charleston, SC Sam decided he wanted to use his platform to give back to the community and the place and where he started his entrepreneurial career. The Full Belly, Full Hearts charitable campaign is an initiative that aims to provide overworked hospitality, healthcare, and other frontline workers with hot meals for no cost and eventually grew to also offer hospitality jobs to Charlestonians who had been laid off. With the creation of this charitable campaign, Sam and all of his employees at Charleston Hospitality Group had the opportunity of giving back to those in need and providing resources to the community where possible.

Raising Awareness: The Pink Drink
This initiative started last year when we opened our first franchised restaurant, Toast All Day on Coleman Blvd, Mount Pleasant. For the whole month of October, Charleston Hospitality Group and Toast All Day found a way to help support all the women and individuals who are currently fighting breast cancer, survived the diagnosis or lost the battle by raising awareness of this disease.

Our Full Belly Full Hearts initiative combined with our Grand Opening of our new Toast All Day location in Mount Pleasant included offering a special Pink Drink to help support the fight to end Breast Cancer. This grapefruit vodka drink was sold at this location and all of the proceeds we made from this cocktail were donated to the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center.

What started as a Breast Cancer awareness month cocktail quickly turned into a multi-month fundraising campaign. This cocktail was originally slated for the month of October and due to the high interest and engagement it raised, our CEO Sam Mustafa decided that the drink would stay on the menu until right after Valentine’s Day.

By the end of the four and a half months, Toast All Day had received $1,024 from our Pink Drink sales alone. Our CEO, being the humanitarian he is, decided to match 100% of the proceeds to show his personal support and acknowledgement. This raised the proceeds to a total of $2,048 for donation to the MUSC Hollings cancer center.

After the completion of the Pink Drink campaign, Sam Mustafa and our Charleston Hospitality Group Director of Operations, Jeff Diehl were able to provide MUSC with two checks of all of the proceeds earned. Debbie Bordeau,the Director of Development showed her gratitude by stating, “we are incredibly grateful for this wonderful donation from Sam Mustafa and Charleston Hospitality Group. Support from local businesses is one of the reasons MUSC Hollings Cancer Center is able to offer the best possible treatment options for our patients. We are so thankful for our partners in the community who are working with us to change what’s possible in cancer care.”

Giving back to the community is second nature to us. Stay tuned to see what upcoming initiatives and community outreach we have coming soon!