Pet Soup Kitchen On Verge Of Eviction, Nonprofit Seeks Donations

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen boasts that they established the first pet food bank serving individual pet owners and helped to establish more 200 pet food banks all over the country; but the nonprofit is facing eviction from their building if they can't come up with their rent money. The organization began in 1997 in Lilburn.

Owner Tom Wargo said the organization fell behind on the rent for the nonprofit’s Lawrenceville facility. Wargo said the shopping center where the pet products are stored was sold and the rent went up 70 percent.

The nonprofit could not keep up.

"We now have 10,000 square foot of warehouse space and help individuals, rescues, shelters, and natural disaster areas," Wargo posted on GoFundMe. "Problem is with more product coming in and more people and pets needing help, our expenses go up as well. Daffy's has had its share of bad luck over the past year or so and it keeps creeping in on us."

(For more news like this, sign up for Patch real-time email alerts for the latest news in Lawrenceville — or other neighborhoods. Access Patch on the go with our iPhone app or our brand new app for Android phone users.)

"First we damaged our trailer and blew the motor in our only delivery truck taking supplies to Louisiana," continued the GoFundMe post. "We signed a lease on a new pet supply store that will provide a cat therapy room, discount vaccines, and a space for meetings and lectures to serve and educate the community on pets and animals in general. That was 14 months ago and we have still not been able to open due to issues with property management and fire inspections etc. It has been one road block after another. We have spent about $20,000 getting this store ready to open which should be in April and we have optimistically been telling people just one more month or two more months for what feels like forever, but needless to say this has left us financially crippled. Last year we distributed over 1.5 million dollars worth of supplies but the donations are not coming in as they were."

The community came to the rescue with the help of the GoFundMe page. For the moment, Wargo reported, Daffy’s will continue. To date, it has reached more than $10,746 in donations, surpassing its $10,000 goal. There were 186 people who raised the money in eight days.

"We are overwhelmed with the response," reads an update Tuesday on the GoFundMe page. "Our supporters are amazing, Thank you so much for the help so far. We are so much more confident that we may be able to make this happen so we can continue with our mission to Keep Families and there pets together and continue to create and offer programs, education and assistance to all communities and animals throughout Georgia and everywhere else we can help. The donations and store purchases are a blessing . So many have reached out to us. The words of encouragement are so appreciated and make everything so worth it. Daffy's Pet Soup Kitchen is more than us it's all of you too. We are more than Half way there and every donation has gotten us this far. Thank you again and we believe we can come very close if not reach this goal in the next two days."

For more information, go to the Daffy’s website.

Photo courtesy GoFundMe