Leopold's Books Bar Caffe in Madison, Wis., has started selling traditional Ukrainian meals on Tuesday evenings, with net proceeds from the dinner sales going to the World Central Kitchen, an organization working to feed Ukrainian refugees in western Ukraine and Poland.
NBC15 reported that store owner Samuel Brown and his team held the first Ukrainian Food Night on March 15 and another on March 22. Meals were served from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and the menu included holubsti, a cabbage roll stuffed with meat and rice in tomato sauce, as well as beet salad and matzo ball soup. While all the meals were pre-packaged for take-out, customers could also eat them in-store.
"We were just looking for another way to give back and another way that we could get people through the door," Brown said. "I know a lot of people want to come up with some way to contribute as they're watching the terrible news come out of Ukraine."
At the same time, Leopold's is also donating net proceeds from sales of books either about Ukraine or by Ukrainian authors to the World Central Kitchen. Brown added that it's been encouraging and touching to see how many people have purchased those books, and he feels a responsibility as a bookseller to do what he can to support Ukrainians and to champion free speech.