Cathy Dobson
A local restaurant owner has been lauded internationally for his commitment to supporting Sarnia-Lambton during COVID-19.
Manjit Singh of Sitara Indian Cuisine is one of 3,000 small business owners in Canada and the U.S. named a Local Business Person of the Year by Alignable, North America’s largest online referral network for small business.
Quite a distinction considering there were 25,000 nominees, says Alignable spokesman Chuck Casto.
In Sarnia, Singh had the most votes among 33 nominated for the honour, Casto said.
“The winners are local business champions. They’ve gone above and beyond to help their peers during the COVID crisis.
“I call them hometown business heroes,” Casto said.
Singh has been a familiar visitor at Bluewater Health through the pandemic, arriving almost every day with free and individually packaged meals for hospital workers.
In 2020, he delivered nearly 1,600 meals free-of-charge. This year, he’s delivered 600 more, charging half price.
“Manjit was one of the first businesses to bring food for our hospital staff,” said Kathy Alexander, executive director of the Bluewater Health Foundation.
“He generously reached out to us. That’s a lot of work to individually package 1,600 meals.”
Alexander said the kindness of Singh and other local restaurateurs who bring food to hospital workers has helped raise morale and shown how much the community cares.
“I do this because it’s especially tough for health-care workers during the pandemic,” said Singh.
“It’s a big challenge to not only worry about the patients, but also fear that you may catch the virus and spread it to your family.”
Singh and his wife Balwinder Kaur have a personal understanding of the hurdles faced by health-care workers.
When they opened Sitara’s first location on London Road in 2012 he was an anesthetist and she was a nurse working in Port Huron and living in Sarnia.
In fact, Singh continued to work several hours a week at the hospital until January 2020, when he retired to dedicate time to his growing chain of restaurants.
Since 2012, Sitara has opened a second location in downtown Sarnia and a Petrolia location that opened in December.
Apart from the hospital sites in Sarnia and Petrolia, Singh has delivered free meals to workers at Metro on London Road, to the Inn of the Good Shepherd and St. Joseph’s Hospice.
He said Sitara has been so busy the past year he’s added six employees, bringing the complement at the three locations to 23. He also paid his employees bonuses for working during the pandemic.
“We are totally blessed and receive amazing support from the community,” he said. “I’ve always believed that partnerships make businesses stronger and I’ve always given back to the community.
“These are rough times, especially for frontline workers, and I want to show them we are all in this together.”
Singh said he was grateful for the support of other businesses that voted for him in the Alignable competition.
Singh was one of 277 named 2021 Local Business Person of the Year in Canada, based on the number of votes received.
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