Emilio’s Bakery in the Bronx is paying it forward after getting a grant to stay afloat. 

They’re helping feed the community. Guadalupe Pita runs the bakery and says the pandemic was not easy on business. 

"We serve like eight schools and they closed so that’s when we had to start laying off employees and we had to close for a couple of weeks,” said Pita. 

After briefly shutting down, Pita and her family reopened the bakery working 90 hours a week. She says it was in an effort to stay afloat and support the community. 

They were able to rehire their employees in December when they received a $10,000 grant from the nonprofit Lisc NYC, which donated over $1 million to minority and under-represented small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic. 

They’ve donated over 100,000 meals, especially to single mothers in the neighborhood who’ve lost their jobs.