Using a pay-what-you-can model, Beloved Community Café will open soon in the Grand Central District. The mission: not just to feed people, but to nourish them.
At a time when 1 in 4 Americans report eating every meal alone, the café, located at 1940 Central Ave., offers a space for people to break bread together without breaking the bank.
“One of our guiding principles is no one eats alone unless they want to, and so we plan to have hospitality volunteers who are just here to sit down with you,” said the Rev. Jen Daysa, co-manager of the café. “If someone’s a widow, or they’re a teenager who got kicked out of their house or whoever they are, there’s someone here to sit with you and talk with you if you want.”
“We had, in particular, researched the loneliness epidemic and how many people eat all their meals alone. And we wanted to kind of address that somehow. Then the pieces started to fall together, and it was a whole evolution of getting to this vision that we have now.”
The mission statement is simple but transformative: “Beloved Community Café is a space of radical hospitality where good food and genuine connection are available to all, regardless of what someone can afford — where people find support in recovery, opportunities for spiritual growth, and a space to simply be.”
The substance-free community café will also have the option to pay it forward, whereby customers pay extra to help fund a neighbor-in-need’s meal, and a “pay with service” option for folks who don’t have the financial means to cover their meal.
“If you can’t pay, you let one of the volunteers or managers know, and we’ll say, ‘Yeah. Can you clean the windows, or can you help with this in the kitchen?’” said Daysa.
Chef Blake Robbins will serve as the kitchen manager. Robbins previously ran a catering business that served local businesses, including the Imagine Museum and FloridaRAMA.
Though specifics are still being ironed out, Beloved Café will offer lunch service most days of the week and a community dinner at least once monthly with the vision of being a “place for people to come and gather” to “get to know your neighbors,” Daysa said.
“There’s just not a lot of that out there these days.”
In addition to program-free meal service, the space will be open a few afternoons a week as a Recovery Café, in partnership with Recovery Epicenter Foundation. Recovery Café is a nationwide network supporting people on the road to recovery by using a model with three commitments: being sober when on the premises, participating in a weekly Recovery Circle and contributing to the café through volunteering or other capacity.
On Sundays, the café will open up as Church Brunch and offer a space for worship and reflection. Though it operates as a distinct entity, the café is housed within the Good Samaritan Church, where café co-manager Daysa also serves as a pastor. She will lead Sunday services.
Despite the religious focus on Sunday, Daysa reiterates that the space is for everyone, regardless of creed.
“It’s a space to connect,” she said. “We have about 10 partner churches that plan to contribute funds and volunteers. They’re all progressive, inclusive churches, and we’re going to have a strict policy that we’re not trying to convert anyone. If you have to show your faith, you show it just through your actions and your love, not by trying to proselytize.
“Any religious symbols that we have out on Sundays will be put away before it’s community café hours, because we really want this to be a space that anyone of any faith feels welcome here.”
Daysa hopes that the café is the start of a larger transformation in the community, one that’s grounded in connections and mutuality.
“I think diverse strangers getting together across socioeconomic lines and all different lines of division and actually eating together is something deeply needed. We’re so polarized right now, and we’re not actually talking to each other. We’re online talking into our little echo chambers.”
Beloved, she says, “creates an epicenter of a beloved community, meaning that like that community and the connections kind of ripple out. I hope it’s an example of where kind of love and neighborliness is done well, and that that also ripples out from us.”
“And where people are nourished.”
To stay updated on hours and openings, visit belovedcommunitycafe.org.
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