Jerome and I happened to be in Raleigh, North Carolina for a business meeting when we encountered A Place At The Table (APATT). We thought it’d be a great topic for an article in The ADRR (as well as Town Square clients’), as it touches on many ideas that downtown leaders and stakeholders will find of considerable interest as they deal with the homeless in their districts. Here is the APATT story.
Introduction to A Place At The Table
What is it? A 3600 square foot breakfast/lunch cafe in downtown Raleigh, NC.
Who runs it? Founder Maggie Kane, now Executive Director of its 501(3)(c) nonprofit
Why we’re writing about it: It’s a “pay what you can” cafe with a paid staff, a volunteer staff, “pay it forward” donations, and a mission that serves a critical need in any major urban downtown that is experiencing a homeless crisis.
It’s just turning 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and the line has already formed at this unassuming cafe on West Hartgett Street in downtown Raleigh. But instead of it being a line full of just one type of client (student, hipster, business executive), the line instead is a melange of all the above, also including homeless individuals, some of whom have their belongings with them.
Going inside, the place is cheery from the outset, as the cafe employs a “greeter;” it’s also got quality linens, nice lighting, flowers on tables, good fonts, and signs with not only the menu, but also with the philosophy and practices of the cafe.
And what a model–it’s essentially three-tiered, with an option to pay the suggested price, paying less than the suggested price, or volunteering an amount of time at the cafe to cover the cost of your food. You can also pay for additional “pay it forward” cards if you want to sponsor someone else’s meal or make a donation on top of your meal.And all of these things are noted on boards around the cafe–how many volunteer hours, how much has been collected in “pay it forward” donations, how many cups of coffee the cafe has served, etc.
All in all, it’s a bustling, friendly place with both a paid staff and a volunteer staff, and with 4.8 ratings on both Google and Yelp going back five years, it’s obviously considered a staple of the neighborhood, as opposed to just a quirky little project that someone dreamt of.
Of course, A Place At The Table IS a quirky little project that someone dreamt up-her name is Maggie Kane, and as we spent more time with her, we became increasingly impressed with both her and her model, as it’s essentially an Anarchist Cafe operating in a downtown American city. Below is her story.
Being Maggie Kane
Maggie graduated from North Carolina State University in 2013; in college, she worked at a day shelter “for people experiencing homelessness.” The shelter served about 100 people a day, serving coffee and basic sandwiches. But she made such a connection with the patrons that about ten of them came to her college graduation–and she knew then that food could be a connection through which advocates could connect with folks in need.
She also realized that most soup kitchens and shelter food services did not offer much choice. She made two key observations:
People have more empowerment when they can make choices about their food
People feel more seen and acknowledged when they are given choices about their food
So Maggie decided to work on a new concept in Raleigh, creating a space where formerly “invisible” people could come together and experience being acknowledged, instead of being ignored. She visited the F.A.R.M. Cafe in Boone, NC, and saw the “pay what you can” model working there, and she found more than thirty other places around the country running similar models.
The Process Begins: 2014-2018
Maggie developed the following principles as part of her research, and outreach:
Pay as you can model
Offer “good food for all regardless of means”
Don’t make the restaurant feel different from other restaurants
All menu prices are suggested. People can pay less, or more, or can work to pay.
A family can’t come any time if it can’t pay.
You have do so something in order to eat there. It is a “hand up” not a “hand out.”
Next, she gathered a team of people who had experience with poverty, and visited a different non-profit every month, pitching her concept. She also did many pop-ups to test different elements of the program, including Saturday setups at different restaurants with a “pay as you go” model. She kept testing the ideas and slowly built word-of-month; at the same time, both “fundraising” and “friendraising” was started, and she had raised $500,000 by 2017.
For Maggie, she believed that the model would only work if it was financially viable–not that it necessarily “turned a profit,” but that the funding was appropriate and consistent between actual money earned at the cafe, supplemented by donations and grants that kept the operation consistently open. She held finance meetings monthly and realized that the right space would be key–eventually sourced by York Properties, who had a long history of working with non-profits in the area. Additionally, Maggie got help from local restaurants such as BUKU, who helped with the pop-up model and are on the board, as well as friends that called many landlords, almost all of whom passed on the opportunity.
2018: The Cafe Opens
When Maggie finally opened the cafe in January 2018, she was paying full market rent, with a space half the size that it is today, 5 years later. Originally it was 6 paid staff, which has now grown to 20. She was finally able to quit her other job, which she had had until 2017, but from the very beginning, the cafe exhibited many of the traits that Maggie had originally planned: that it looked the same as any other restaurant, that the menu prices were suggested, that people could “work off their meal” by volunteering, or that they can “sponsor” a card to pay for someone else’s meal. Corporate partners can also buy cards to pay for other meals, and they have access to the cafe, as well as the cafe’s other non-profit partners.
Naturally, this project had fully consumed Maggie for 5 years, and now she knew that to keep it going, she’d have to hire more staff or experience burnout, including 2 main chefs, baristas, a manager for the volunteer, staff, and more. Then the pandemic hit.
Ironically, it turned out that the pandemic wound up being a catalyst for increasing the square footage from 1500 sq ft to 3600 sq feet, and having the business go from 100 customers a day to 250-300 a day–prompting the need for a true commercial kitchen to be installed. It also meant that the cafe needed a security guard, and that its insurance premiums also rose as a consequence (including insurance for volunteers, liability, and health insurance for staff).
2023: The State of the Union
Going into the cafe today means being greeted by a well-oiled machine that involves more than 100 daily volunteers, many of whom work a weekly shift, and some of whom pay for their meals. All the volunteers work alongside actual paid staff, including Cheyanne,a community and de-escalation specialist who is the cafe’s community manager and volunteer door greeter (and conflict de-escalator).
The cafe’s goal is to treat people with love and respect, and all new staff are required to work alongside the volunteers, to ensure that they are a good fit. The staff begin at $19/hr, pegged as a “living wage” for this part of the country. Rent is also still at market rate. Consequently, only half of the cafe’s operating budget comes from receipts–the other half is still from individual, corporate, and religious donations. A yearly gala and daily fundraising at the cafe are also part of the model.
The Clientele
The cafe’s clientele are split down the middle–half pay the menu price or donate even more than their meal by doing a “pay it forward,” and half pay less or work off their food credits. The cafe has high ratings on both Google Maps and Yelp (the aforementioned 4.8) because Maggie continues to insist that it needs to compete as a restaurant and not just as a social endeavor.
More importantly, the clientele is made up of many returning customers, all of whom are made to feel cared for, by being greeted and acknowledged. Volunteers chat with everyone who comes in the door, explain the model, lead you to the counter where you can order, and bring you your food. Conversations happen constantly, while, at the same time, staff are trained to be alert for any potential arguments or difficulties. Communal eating, staff remembering the names of patrons, and all patrons being thanked and said goodbye to when they leave–these are all specific techniques that the cafe employs to keep its mission on point.
One of the key experiences of the cafe, according to Maggie, is that the poor and isolated, many of whom are invisible to all but a few aid workers on a daily basis, are now seen and acknowledged by the general population. While “creating a sense of community” is many times stated as an (eventually empty) goal that gets bandied about by urban planners, architects, and activists in proposals and mission statements, A Place At the Table has been able to do just that–by realizing that actual work by staff, and actual training of staff, are the only ways to create a community; you can’t just build out a “cool space” somewhere and hope that a community will magically adopt it. Maggie has chosen food as her tool to reach people and create a community; however, food isn’t the only tool that can create community.
There is a deeper challenge at work here, as well. With the greater popularity comes additional situations that require awareness and tact; for the cafe, Cheyanne is the key person–she uses kindness as her first and foremost tool, but lets other staff intervene when necessary, always with the goal of de-escalating any potential dangerous situation–especially since substance abuse and alcohol addiction are very prevalent.
Nonetheless, the cafe has seen many success stories, where volunteers and others in transition acquire transferable skills, can use the cafe as a reference, and simply gain confidence by their association with the cafe. The cafe offers culinary internships, not all of which work out, but some do. There is no silver bullet except hard work and dedication to the mission–and, even then, there are folks that don’t respond to the cafe’s mission.
Notes on the Future
As 2023 draws to a close, Maggie is looking forward to feeding more people, perhaps with a food truck or by helping others launch their own operation–always with the goals of solidifying and expanding the existing community that the cafe has fostered. But she cautions that every new venture needs to adjust to its local environment, and that every venture needs all kinds of partners and supporters–financial, physical, spiritual and otherwise.
This will be the challenge going forward in every major city that is struggling to “contain” or “ameliorate” its homeless and at-risk population challenges–how to bring these populations back into “mainstream” society, where they have the chance to feel self-worth, to interact again with society at large (since many of them had such interactions in the past), and to hopefully move beyond their current situation.
A Place At The Table is just one building block in a much more multifaceted solution, but there’s no reason that it can’t be duplicated in dozens of Downtowns in the country. It’s reducing the fear of “downtown blight” by not hiding, or removing, disadvantaged folks, but by bringing them out in the open and having them interact with people who might normally have a fear of interaction, or otherwise consider their presence to be a stain on the city, instead of an opportunity for interaction and community.
We wish Maggie all the best and we’d love to know what you think!
Links:
A Place At The Table: https://tableraleigh.org/
Maggie Kane TedTalk: www.ted.com/talks/maggie_kane_food_for_thought_choice_and_dignity
Boone’s F.A.R.M. Cafe: https://www.nccommunityfoundation.org/
List of other places with this model: https://www.oneworldeverybodyeats.org/find-a-cafe