South Bay Elites Give Back to the Community!

Having an Elite badge on your Yelp profile means a lot of things: you have the awe and respect of your fellow yelpers, you get to attend cool parties with food and booze and you often get free tickets to shows and other happening events around town. Those are all really awesome perks of being an active contributor to the site, however, Yelp South Bay Elites recently took it to the next level by giving back to the community!

This past Saturday, November 5, a group of 20 Elites + their Community Manager volunteered their time at Sacred Heart Community Service during their busiest day of the year. Sacred Heart's mission is to help fight poverty in the San Jose area. Elites helped sign up over 2,000 families for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, directed traffic in the parking lot, handed out PB&J sammies to people waiting in line, bagged food for donations – just to name a few of the tasks! Although it was a cold, gray day outside, the customers of Sacred Heart were warm, friendly and thankful.

After the volunteer shift was over, the group headed over to The Temple Bar and Lounge in downtown San Jose for an after-party. Here, they enjoyed Lagunitas pints and shots of Jorango tequila – 'cause it wouldn't be a Yelp Elite Event without good booze 🙂 Not to be outdone, Tikka Bytes and Soulnese food trucks brought a TON of tasty treats for everyone to eat, including SolStix, Mac & Roll and Garlic Pork Fries. Seriously, the food kept coming and coming all night!

Although the food and drinks were delicious, everyone would agree that the best part about this event was spending time with each other while getting the "warm fuzzies" from doing a good deed. Most of us say that we want to volunteer, but don't take the time to actually do it! As Jeffrey C put it: "I haven't done community service in years and figured it was about time to give it another try after seeing the event posted. Seeing all those people in need of holiday meals and toys for their children really made me appreciate what I have – I think that was the biggest impact that volunteering did for me."

The rest of the reviews really are heartwarming – read them here! Also, check out the pics taken by redspherestudios on the Yelp Flickr page. Hoping to work with Sacred Heart again in the future, as most of us would definitely be willing to go back and help out again. Good times, good people, great cause!

Abby S (South Bay Yelp Community Manager) + Courtney M (South Bay Yelp Intern)