RINCON — A Springfield restaurant recently served a sizeable donation to a local school.

Huddle House raised $1,391 for Marlow Elementary School thanks in part to the generosity of its customers

“We are really super excited about our team supporting this cause and really getting behind it, and collecting the amount it was able to get,” Huddle House Field Marketing Manager Brianna Betts said.

The Springfield Huddle House is a regular participant in the company’s national fundraising efforts.

“Huddle House has always been committed to giving back to the communities that we serve,” Betts said. “It’s kind of one of the cornerstones.”

Huddle House campaigns benefit selected organizations and customers.

“The location opted into the program to collect donations from the community and then send those to the school,” Betts said. “As we collected donations, if a customer donated $5 or more, we gave them a voucher for $5 that they could use in the restaurant as a ‘thank you’ for their contribution.”

The donations were collected over a six-week stretch.

“I don’t know how many people contributed but I can tell you that one person made a $500 donation,” Betts said. “It really shows that the people were really gung-ho about giving back to the community.”

After being asked why Marlow received the donation instead of a school closer to the restaurant, Betts said, “Sometimes those schools that are further out of town don’t get much attention. I think a lot of our locations made their (fund-raising) decisions based on that reason.”

Betts said Marlow was selected by the local Huddle House’s general manager.

“They liked the school’s mission and they wanted to support some of the younger members of the community,” she said.

Huddle House gave the money to Marlow with no strings attached.

“The objective is for them to allocate it however they need best,” Betts said. “... Our hope was just to give them a little extra boost for anything that they are lacking.”