It’s the holiday season, which means more and more opportunities for giving and receiving. Located in downtown Bowling Green, For Keeps is a local gift store that hosted their annual Santa’s Helper event on Nov. 14-16.
Amy Ahrens, owner of For Keeps, was committed to giving back to the community in partnership with the BG Christian Food Pantry.
“We just felt like we wanted to do a little something extra, so this year for the first time we’re gonna be giving $1000 in cash to the food pantry. And if folks donate, say they wanna round up their sale or they wanna give us an extra dollar, we will match whatever customers give us over the course of the three days,”Ahrens said.
With recent shifting of benefits and resources, it seemed that the need was more necessary.
“Knowing that there’s a little bit more need with a lot of folks that haven’t been able to get their SNAP benefits, we just wanted to do a little something extra,” she said.
In the years of holding this event, Ahrens has always been happy to see the way the community comes together and the support from customers.
“I mean we’re so lucky, and that weekend is always kind of the kickoff for our holiday season and we have so many people, we just ask for three non-perishable items for the food pantry, that’s all we ask. We get people that bring us bags of groceries. They go well above and beyond the three items,” she said.
Ahrens herself is no stranger to business as her family has owned and worked in stores downtown for some time.
“My dad actually bought the building that For Keeps is in now, we owned the hardware store at the time and he was gonna put more hardware in there,” Ahrens said.
In the summer of 1997, her dad bought the building next to Ben’s Hardware store, and For Keeps was born.
“I said that would be such a cool gift store, because that’s what I was doing at the time was gift retail. And he’s like well I don’t know anything about gifts so you’re gonna have to come back and run it if we’re gonna do something like that,” she explained.
The holiday spirit is well underway after their opening event, and Ahrens believes For Keeps is there to help provide the stuff that matters.
“Our customers are not just looking to have something to wrap and stick under the tree. They really are looking for the meaning in the gift they’re giving and we feel really lucky to be able to help them find those things,” she said.
Find more here: https://www.forkeepsgifts.com/
