The Welcome Project, an immigrant advocacy and education organization for the Somerville community, last week announced that it is selling a $10 YUM Restaurant Card that offers a year-long 10-percent discount on orders of $25 or more at nine immigrant-run restaurants in Somerville.
The card promotes the multicultural cuisine of Somerville while supporting the Welcome Project and Somerville immigrant families.
"We thought it was a better way to promote the contributions immigrants are making to the city and to promote the small businesses that are providing foods from all over the world to our community," Welcome Project Director Warren Goldstein-Gelb told the Daily.
The YUM Card is valid at nine participating immigrant-run restaurants that serve international cuisines in Somerville. The proceeds from the card will help fund the Welcome Project's adult English classes and its programs for children from immigrant families, according to Goldstein-Gelb.
"We want the YUM Card to really raise awareness [of] the many contributions that immigrants make in the city of Somerville," Goldstein-Gelb said. "Food is among one of the strengths that immigrants bring to the city, and there are many others."
The Welcome Project selected the restaurants featured on the YUM Card in order to represent a wide array of cuisines, he said. The restaurants on this year's card are Aguacate Verde, Amelia's Kitchen, Churrasco Buffet and Grill, Fasika, Istanbul'lu, Maya Sol, Ronnarong Thai Tapas Bar, Sabur, and Yak and Yeti.
"We also wanted to make sure that we had some mix of the older generation of immigrants that came to the city, so the Italian restaurant Amelia's is in there," Goldstein-Gelb said. "We just wanted a range, so we reached out to a group of restaurants and tried to make sure we had a balance."
The restaurants on the YUM Card have partnered with the city's Shape Up Approved campaign, which helps consumers identify healthier options when eating out, Goldstein-Gelb said.
"[Somerville residents] are interested in different kinds of food and culture and they're also interested in eating healthfully," he said. "By working with Shape Up and restaurants we're providing an opportunity for people to do both."
Although the YUM card originally featured 10 restaurants, only nine remain active since the Indian restaurant Namaskar in Davis Square shut its doors earlier this month, Goldstein-Gelb said.
This year marks the third consecutive year that the Welcome Project has sold the YUM Restaurant Card. Last year, the nonprofit group sold around 400 cards, which Goldstein-Gelb identified as a positive indicator of future card sales.
"There are a lot of people in Somerville, and hopefully outside of Somerville as well, who the card is helping discover new tastes and new cuisines right in their own backyard," he said.
Silvia De la Sota, owner of Aguacate Verde in Porter Square, hopes that the YUM card will encourage more customers to come to her restaurant.
"I'm not sure yet, but I'm hoping it will attract regular customers,"De la Sota said.
The nine YUM card restaurants will come together for the second annual "YUM: A Taste of Immigrant City" celebration and fundraiser on April 25 at the Arts at the Armory, Goldstein-Gelb said.
"We're hoping and planning to publicize the restaurants not only through the event, but through the YUM blog and the YUM Facebook page so that we can give more exposure to the restaurants," he said. "Hopefully, the YUM card [holders] will try places they did not know about or maybe [knew] about but hadn't had the opportunity to try yet."
The Welcome Project initiated the YUM blog with the Tufts University Urban Borderlands anthropology class, Goldstein-Gelb said. The blog features several immigrant-run restaurants in Somerville that aren't on the YUM Card.
"We broadened out a little bit in the effort to promote immigrant establishments within the city," he said. "We are doing our best to provide a variety of restaurants."
