T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY - Jake Rowley officially soft launched his new store, Thrifty Relief, at 2901 S. Center St. in the back of Arona Home Essentials on Saturday morning.

Local businessman Jake Rowley has a passion for contributing to local community initiatives as well as giving his time and money to disaster relief efforts across the country with the United Cajun Navy, and he plans to do both through his latest venture, Thrifty Relief, located at 2901 S. Center St. in the back of Arona Home Essentials.

Rowley held a soft opening for the new thrift store, which piggybacks of the name of his other business, Junk Relief, on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and as he explained, it gives him more flexibility to offload some surplus products and free up space in the warehouse for cleanup supplies when he heads out to a disaster area with the UCN. All proceeds Thrifty Relief generates will go back into either community giving initiatives or disaster relief.

“We do ship quite a bit of clothing to disasters, but but we also don’t want to create that second disaster where they’re having their volunteers spending time, being able to go through things, and so this was kind of a way, because we know that we’re way oversupplied on clothes at all times and we have the ways to get them as well as a few other items,” he said. “It was just really a good way to be able to raise the money to put those semis on the road and be able to continue these community initiatives like Coats for the Community or Holiday Hope.”

Along with UCN, where Rowley serves as the Midwest team leader, the proceeds will also benefit the nonprofits Mercy Chefs and Operation Blessing. Arona has donated the current space, which has served as the warehouse for Midwest UCN operations for the last few years, and depending on how the test run goes, Rowley may explore renting a more traditional storefront for Thrifty Relief in the future.

The store will open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and donations of household goods and furniture will be accepted beginning Thursday of this week. Rowley noted, however, that he will not be accepting clothing donations. A system for accepting credit cards will also be set up soon along with check and cash options.

“The nice thing about this is (the) very low operating cost. I have almost no operating cost, especially with the donated space, so 100 percent of those dollars that go through that cash register will be donated back either into the community or into these disaster response things,” he said. “We also, this year, are gonna really ramp up some of our events again.”

Rowley is currently working on arranging another Coats for the Community event in November as well as Holiday Hope around Christmas as the UCN bought out the clearance toy stock at Theisen’s recently thanks to a generous discount. Pickup for Pyros is also in the works to raise money for the community fireworks show.

To learn more about Thrifty Relief, visit https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575298260803.