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The Lady Kougar Track and Field team used a total team effort last night to win their fourth straight sectional, and 11th in 12 years, scoring a very impressive 146.5 points in the field of 13 scoring teams, which featured several very strong teams and some of the top athletes in the area. They had....
Look at these HumDingers!!
Mallorie Rose #32 added 3 more to her list and Anna Neal #38 hit her first homer!!!
Good morning friends
I love each and everyone of you for having our backs and looking out for us. Many of you have sent us screenshots of an event that is happening this weekend. That being said our friends at Smoked did go directly to the town yesterday with questions. They also reached out to us right away. The town has permitted them to set up by filling out an application and paying a fee. No this is something we were never offered if we had we would have definitely went this route. Please keep in mind smoked is innocent in all of this. They do this fundraiser every year and give 100% of profits to connection center which is a community based outreach. So while yes we can all be upset with the town for this decision. Please do not take that anger or frustration out on the great people of smoked.
Yesterday is the first we heard of such an application. We already know there is no point in us going to obtain such an application because we are positive they will find a way to deny us especially now lol. I’ve been upset over all of this after yesterday I had a few confidential conversations with a few different people and heard what they are going through and we’ll I’m not upset anymore I’m down right angry. I wish I could share with you those conversations, but for right now I can’t. Just know when you all do finally get to hear them y’all will be just as pi**ed off as I am. I always said this fight isn’t just for us after yesterday us fighting this just became at a whole different level. To the ones who have also reached out in private out of fear commenting publicly would cause you problems with our officials. I’m so sorry you have to feel that way and I’m angry for you also. I promised I would never expose who you are and I meant it. So please never worry about your identity. In time you will get to hear these stories and I have a feeling y’all will be just as angry.
Thanks to a lot of you for your great advice and I don’t care if it costs everything we own I will be seeking legal counsel. The small town BS is about to catch up with several people.
We know not everyone is going to like our business or accept it. We know this and that’s fine. You are allowed to have your own opinion. We would never hold anger to anyone who just doesn’t like us. However when you have officail positions in this town. we hear you have been talking poorly about us and telling lies for whatever reason ya that’s a problem ABIG PROBLEM. So yes today I am extremely pi**ed off with the BS that has been going on and I’m not letting this go on any longer. For anyone who would like the story time on that feel free to follow me Tammy Szostek on my personal page where I have more control who sees what. I can screen who I let on there. So if you send me a request and it doesn’t get accepted it will be because a few of those people are on your friends list.
Sorry for the rant I’m just really really upset. Please be kind to the people of Smoked take your anger and frustration out on the ones who make the rules.
Enjoy this picture of these sweet kids who were our staff. You know the kids who no longer have a job.
Stay cheesy our friends for now I’m gonna stay salty😂😂
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Hello friends
I know many are waiting to see what happened last night. This is going to be a long one so please stay with me. First and most importantly we absolutely love you all the people of Demotte are some of the most amazing people you have been so kind to us and more importantly our young staff. The town official people well Steve told me to keep it clean so I won’t say what I really think of them all. I will however reiterate that Mrs Kendrick you should refrain from talking poorly about me or our business especially at group dinners. Whatever your personal issue with me is I haven’t got a clue. I didn’t even know you until all this started. See when people like us are liked have respect for us we always hear when crap is talked about us. You know the saying word gets around in a small town. Your personal feelings better never prevent us or any of our neighbors that spoke on our behalf from getting building permits or problems with inspections. It’s pretty obvious you can not separate your personal feeling from your professional. In my opinion
Now obviously this whole mess cost us a lot of money. We had been putting all our money into building a new trailer which was put on hold. Now it’s a matter of recouping that money to continue and then find a place we can set up permanently. There isn’t many options for brick and mortars without sinking upwards of 30,000 into it to get it to code for the health department. On top of that rent is extremely insane. If we end up doing that route it will never happen in the town of Demotte. They showed their true colors of how much they really support small businesses. We have options of Wheatfield, roselawn etc. Demotte town will never get one cent of my money. Don’t worry we will still make it possible for all our local supporters to get your food at no extra charge to you. We will always remember those who were good to us. The other issue with the new trailer build is time. Steve was working on it while his company had their shutdown. Now he is back to working many long hours and usually 6 days a week. That doesn’t give him much time. We can’t hire it out to be done well because of the town costing us so much money and With the move our sales went down by half. Being off the beaten path was very difficult. Our road has alot of traffic. Most of our business after the move was from our regulars. We had a few new people but not many. Honestly since the move we are barely breaking even by time we pay staff and for product, but for us it wasn’t about making money as much as that helps. We felt the need to try and be a staple in this community and give back as much as possible. We know we will never get rich doing this, but we have the chance to live a dream we had been working towards for many years. We also owed it to all you amazing people who took a chance on us. I get it people are creatures of habit. We find something we like and it’s hard to give anything else a chance not knowing what you will get. So many of you amazing people took a chance trying our food. We love y’all so much. Apparently all of a sudden town has a food truck ordinance, but last month they didn’t? They were in the works or some BS excuse. We support all fellow food trucks. With that being said since we heard so many times at the meeting if we do for one we have to do for everyone. So I wonder how they will have their touch of Dutch festival with no food? If food trucks can’t be in town that means for everyone. No special exceptions especially just because you hold the Dutch card. Trust me I know it makes me sound heartless, it’s nice our community has events that bring people here! Do I think that should stop absolutely no. I guess they will just have to do it without food trucks. I’ll go back to their own words with if we do for one we have to do for all. Town did give us the option to apply for zoning change which would cost us thousands with application fees, letters, appraisal etc. we know it was their polite way of telling us to shut up. We knew going in this time they already had their minds made up before any meeting. So we can’t afford more money for something they never intend to entertain that idea. It’s just their way of getting more money, because let’s face it, it always comes down to the almighty dollar, and to get us to shut up. With plan B I’m about to get really really loud and this is not just for us. It’s for every other person who has/had a dream and we’re shut down or don’t stand a chance.
Things I learned during this whole process that I didn’t know before. 1) that you don’t need 150 feet of road frontage they will allow it at 70 ( again we do for one we do for all) 2) apparently you need a permit to put in a whole house generator. Now nowhere is that specifically written apparently it falls under miscellaneous. Which means they can make the rules up as they go I suppose. The poor man that got hundreds of dollars in fines for installing one my heart broke for you. So those are some things I learned and thought I would share that information especially for anyone getting ready to build. Apparently our food truck is a safety concern because people speed on our road and it could cause an accident. Which seems odd because I suppose that could happen anytime just make sure you don’t have pizza in your vehicle because apparently that changes everything. They also said it would cause more traffic on our road. So I hope next time 65 is backed up someone from the town goes to the end of 1000 w and prevents people from using our road as a detour that would make our road more dangerous. Apparently also it would bring down the value of properties around us👀👀👀. Ya ok that’s the reason.
I know your thinking Tammy but what does all this mean. It means mama didn’t raise no quitter and I am in the works of plan B. It also means I’m gonna need all of you to make this happen. I’ve done all the research so I know it’s possible for us to make change. No this change will not cause our small town to lose its small town charm. It isn’t something that will draw in all the people from big cities. I would never do anything that would cause harm to our community. I won’t publicly post what that is yet. You are welcome to stop by the shack anytime this weekend to find out. This will only effect a certain amount of people. Now to what all this means. It means this is the last weekend you can find us at the church. Sunday will be our last day. We know the town is trying to find ways to get us out of the lot. This was never a permanent solution. We were helping a church out that need fundraising efforts. We wanted nothing more than for it to be as profitable for them as possible. The plan was always for this trailer to go back on the road and the new one to take its place as we never imagined we would be shut down especially after getting all the approval we thought we needed. Yes we are still actively looking for a new location, but with events that played out it put us way behind financially and with time. So please know we aren’t giving up we are still working towards a new location it will just take more time than we planned on. So please don’t give up on us. We will be back and bigger and better than ever. We owe it to y’all. Please know this is the hardest post I have ever had to make and it absolutely breaks my heart. Earlier when I said town will never get a cent of my money. I meant just that. I will however still support our great small businesses we have here. They are all amazing. I know many of you are just as frustrated and upset by this as we are. Please continue to support them. It’s the town’s fault we can’t have nice things lol not some of our great businesses.
Honestly the hardest part of this for us is. We have 4 amazing young employees who we won’t have hours to give. They are the hardest working kids I have ever met honestly far more responsible that many adults I have had work for us. So if you are looking for employees I highly recommend any of these kids, but please know that 3 of them are in sports and they are still kids so they do need some accommodation with schedules. When we come back we hope that they will come back to us if their schedules allow it. They all have been such a blessing to us. If they have moved on to bigger and better things we will be so happy to know that and understand. We love those kids like they were our own. It’s to bad they are to young to travel with me.
We won’t be gone forever and we have the local fairs Jasper and lake county on our schedule so if we aren’t back by then you can come visit us there.
Let’s go out with a bang this weekend we will have lots of specials as our personal thank you to you all.
Lastly since I know he and and his family see my post because I was messaged by a family member. Mr Gouwens I will expect you not to be driving by taking pictures any longer. You are walking a very fine line of harassment. Seeing we aren’t coming back home you are no longer needed to take pictures to give to the town. How our business ever effected your life is beyond me. Our staffs parents would also appreciate you not taking pictures while their under 18 year old kids are working. Other than that I will leave my personal feelings out of it, because I’m capable of Separating my personal feelings from my professional feelings.
We love y’all so much. Our hours the rest of the week will be Thursday 4-8 Friday 4-8 Saturday and Sunday noon- 8. With delivery available! So our super hero pizza Steve can deliver to you. We will post our schedule for the season and if you are in any of the areas we would love to see you. Any of the contest we run during our festival season you are all still included to participate in. We will always take care of those who took care of us.
Stay cheesy our family. You all became family to us.
Sincerely
Pizza Steve and Mrs pizza Steve.
After a great weekend of Wrestling and becoming State Champion, Cole needs your vote for the Max Preps Athlete of the week! Please take a minute to share and vote for Cole as the Max Preps Athlete of the Week! Congratulations on getting Nominated Cole, and Good Luck! https://www.maxpreps.com/news/A_...
Update: She has been found!
Hi!
If anyone out there is in the Demotte, IN area… this dog Lucy ran away today and we are asking if you could please share to help find her. We have called the local shelters. Thank you!!
State Champ coming through!
Parade at 1215 to celebrate the first State Champ Wrestler from Kankakee Valley High School! ❤️🤍🐾
Today close to noon State Champion Cole Solomey will come back to town. We have a few Fire Trucks and Police Cars to help es**rt him to town. They will meet up at Love's by I 65 and travel on 10 to town. They will go thru town to 8th street. Come out and let Cole know how proud we are of him. KOUGAR...
Great news!
Hello our amazing friends.
Who wants pizza???
Good news. We have found a temporary location to set up until our hearing. You all have been so amazing. We thank you all for all the offers of help, locations etc.
We were reached out to today by a church that was looking to have a fundraiser.they asked us about helping them and setting up. It couldn’t have happened at a more perfect time. We need help they need help. It’s meant to be. If you have never shared a post this is the one to share far and wide. You support will help benefit us and the church. We will continue the same hours. We will still offer delivery the only difference is if you fell in our 10 mile radius before and don’t now we will still only charge you the $7.00 you shouldn’t be punished for us having to move. We are 4 and a half miles from where we are now. We had asked the town what we need to set up at as a business etc since we see many do it. All we need is a contract between us. For the church’s generosity and fundraising efforts we will donate 10% of our profits to the church as well as put a donation jar in the window for them. We will be at the United Pentecostal Church of DeMotte. Their address is 6120 W 1000 N.
We will still need all your support for the hearing on march 14 it is open to the public.
Oh did I mention that we will be open tomorrow 🥰🥰🥰🥰. We will open a little later tomorrow we aim to be open by 3 pm. Moving forward same hours. For every large pizza you get your choice of free cheesy garlic bread or shake up ( they can be made with Splenda) we will announce this week our super bowl specials. We got some good ones. We will also continue as promised with games and contest all week long with lots of great prizes.
Thank y’all so much.
Halo Moon over DeMotte tonight!
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