ATLANTA — It's often said that kindness can be shared for free, and one Atlanta restaurant owner is taking a break from her regular gig and hitting the road with a mission to spread good deeds along the way.
"We're on a six-week tour of the country," Jenny Levison of Atlanta's Souper Jenny restaurants told 11Alive. "It's called the 'Souper Jenny Kindness Tour,'"
With five Souper Jenny locations in Atlanta, Levison is adept in the kitchen, but right now, home is a more mobile version as she and friend Meg Gillentine travel cross country via an RV, spreading kindness one bowl of soup at a time.
The trek has included stops in Selma, Ala., and Lake Charles, La., as well as California, where the pair fed local firefighters dealing with wildfires. With each stop, there is homemade soup to be shared for free.
"Our main goal is to pair up with local farms, buy produce, turn that produce into soup and donate it back to the communities we're visiting," Levison said.
For locales where temperatures aren't so soup-friendly, the two brainstorm other good deeds.
"We bought out a popsicle stand at Sedona in a farmers market and gave away popsicles for free for the rest of the day which was really cool," Gillentine explained.
While in Texas, the pair opted to help residents pay for laundry.
"We filled a container with quarters and left a note saying you've been served. It's too hot for soup so we thought we'd pay for your laundry," Gillentine said.
While spreading kindness is always in season, Levison said it was the current climate that called her to do more.
"Between the pandemic and the election and racial tensions, it's been a hard time for everyone," she said. "I was just tired of sitting in my apartment and doing nothing."
Instead, the pair is on a mission to give what they can, where they can, to make a difference.
"It's not that we can change the world in a matter of days but every little ripple does something," Gillentine said. "We're just trying to make small ripples out here."