Regional St. Louis retailer buys $200,000 worth of gift cards for its employees St. Louis-based Schnuck Markets is making the holidays a little happier for its workers and local restaurants in its communities with a new program that gives all Schnucks associates a $15 gift card to a restaurant located within five miles of his or her work location. The company is spending $200,000 on the gift cards, which will help support local restaurants that have been challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic. “As many families do this time of year, we wanted to support others in our ‘food family’ — in this case, the many local restaurants negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Schnucks chairman and CEO Todd Schnuck. “We thought the best way to do this was by offering all of our teammates gift cards to these restaurants near our stores, extending our mission to nourish people’s lives to those many businesses and their employees who help make up the communities that we jointly serve.”