SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Firecracker Thai Kitchen is one of many restaurants that are a part of Keeping it Local, a food voucher program, but has yet to see any impact from this program. The issue is that no one has redeemed their voucher at Firecracker Thai Kitchen.
Keeping it Local is meant to aid local restaurants in Onondaga County due to the pandemic. People buy vouchers and then proceed to redeem them at any participating restaurant. The Onondaga County Office of Economic Development website shows that the last selling of vouchers is all sold out. Firecracker Thai Kitchen is still waiting to see vouchers used.
Firecracker Thai Kitchen is located at Salt City Market, which was opened earlier this year. Sarinthra Tong-Ngork, the owner, said she thinks a big part of why vouchers haven’t been used at their location is because people still don’t know they exist.
“Even though we’ve been open since January, we still get people every day who say to me ‘Oh this is our first time in the market,’ and ‘Oh we just found out this is here,” said Tong-Ngork.
“We’re still trying to get the word out to Syracuse and the outer communities and hopefully increasing awareness that we’re here,” said Tong-Ngork.
Despite not having seen any kind of impact from the voucher program, they’re still hopeful that this will increase their business and grow their presence. The sous-chef, Alex Muraca, said that they’re trying their very best under all the current circumstances.
“It’s obviously unprecedented times… we’re doing the best we can do, it’s a worry to be out all the time, I get that, but we hope more people will come out,” Muraca said.
We reached out to the Onondaga County Office of Economic Development to receive an update and more on the voucher sales, but received no response.
