Manny's Deli To Offer Free Sandwiches To Anyone Wearing A Mask

CHICAGO — One of the city’s top delis has tried to get Chicagoans to follow coronavirus mask guidelines with an offer of free sandwiches if the downtown business could go 30 days without having to get after customers who failed to keep their faces covered.

Apparently, the notion of free pastrami didn't do the trick.

Now, after that failed experiment led Manny’s Deli to try to find someone to financially back an effort to reward customers who kept their faces covered, an anonymous donor has accepted the challenge.

On Wednesday, Manny's announced that Free Sandwich Day will be March 30, when the deli will be giving away 1,000 free sandwiches on a first come, first served basis. There will be one sandwich per person, the deli announced on social media.

Owners of the deli that has been part of Chicago’s sandwich landscape since 1942 said that they will soon announce when they will offer free sandwiches to anyone who wears a mask into the South Loop establishment As of Tuesday, more than 450 people have liked the tweet announcing that someone had offered to back the effort.

Manny's, which is located at 1141 S. Jefferson, had initially offered the free sandwiches if customers could last a month without having to be told to properly wear their masks. But within a day of offering up the promotion, deli owners said that they had to scold seven customers to adjust their face-coverings.

The new promotion comes as city health officials said that they are seeing a spike in positive coronavirus cases around the city. As of Tuesday, the city is averaging 350 daily cases as opposed to recently when Chicago was seeing an average of 280 daily cases.

Chicago’s Public Health Commissioner Dr. Alison Arwady said she is worried about the direction that the city is headed as it relates to new coronavirus cases. Arwady said that there has been a 23 percent spike in cases of late in Chicago – notably involving residents under the age of 40. She likened it to a similar surge the city experienced last fall.

“It was really these same cases in young adults that started this,” Arwady said Tuesday.