Maggie Kane on How to Build Community While Decreasing Food Insecurity
"These folks are experiencing poverty. It's not a lazy issue. It's not a drug issue. It's a lack of relationship issue." -Maggie Kane, Executive and Founder of A Place at the Table
Summary
Trajectory: 18% or about 46 million adults in America have only one or no trustworthy person outside their household on whom they can rely for things like help when they are sick or looking after a child in an emergency. More than half of the US adults (58%) in a survey conducted in 2021 considered themselves lonely. 61% of adults experienced loneliness in 2019, up from 54% in 2018. And at some point in 2021, 13.5 million (10.2%) US households were food insecure. Essentially unchanged from 10.5 percent in 2020. As well, the polarization of Americans is at record highs.
Who: I chatted with Maggie Kane, Executive and Founder of A Place at the Table.
What: A Place at the Table is a pay-what-you-can non-profit cafe. Committed to serving delicious and wholesome meals while preserving and honoring all dignity, regardless of means or margins. It seeks to build community and decrease food insecurity. Since opening in 2018, they have had over 2000 people volunteer each year, and more than 108,000 meals have been served to someone in need.
Where: Downton Raleigh (300 W Hargett St #50, Raleigh, NC 27601).
How: Using a pay-what-you-can business model that relies on community donations.
Ideas:
Maggie Kane believes that loneliness and the cycle of poverty can be improved by building a stronger community. A critical component that is not present in the current concept of soup kitchens.
Political polarization may be reduced by building community and having a place for people to talk to one another and be seen.
Maggie also thinks that the future of community building should include incorporating pay-what-you-can community-funded aspects into businesses and non-profits. However, it is crucial to ask for help from other community members and listen to them to understand how to best help.
What if we could reduce food insecurity while also fostering community?
Background
This is what A Place at the Table, a pay-what-you-can non-profit cafe, is doing. Since opening in 2018, they have had over 2000 people volunteer each year, and more than 108,000 meals have been served to someone in need.
Trajectory
More than half of the US adults (58%) in a survey conducted in 2021 considered themselves lonely. 61% of adults experienced loneliness in 2019, up from 54% in 2018. And at some point in 2021, 13.5 million (10.2%) US households were food insecure. Essentially unchanged from 10.5 percent in 2020.
Why is this a problem?
The community in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age plays a critical role in influencing who gets a disease(s) and what the outcomes of the disease(s) are.
A social capital survey by the Impact Genome/AP-NORC conducted in 2021 shows that millions in America lack critical social bonds. In their personal and professional lives, they face barriers to accessing essential services and institutions or aren't meaningfully engaged in their community. 18% of Americans have no one outside their household they can rely on for help in an emergency. COVID-19 caused more adults to lose rather than gain social capital in their professional lives. White, college-educated, and wealthier adults are more likely to have strong personal and professional networks.
20%, or 49 million Americans, have no contact in their trusted network who can help draft a resume, connect with a potential employer, or provide advice on workplace challenges.
In September 2022, the Biden-Harris administration released a strategy to decrease food insecurity, the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, the first in over 50 years. Taking critical steps needed to bring affordable and nutritious food to Americans who have food insecurity will also decrease preventable diseases caused by food insecurity.
While A Place at the Table's focus seems to be food insecurity, the underlining goal is to build community. Connecting people and giving people a place to interact. This is particularly relevant given that the polarization of Americans is at record highs, the greater economic inequality faced in the country, and the critical need for Americans to break out from the cycle of poverty.
Comprehensive data collection methods have been proposed and implemented for health equity data. Researchers publish papers that analyze health disparities data and are published in leading scientific journals. However, rarely are there solutions that people implement which affect improving these social determinants of health, even more so outside a healthcare setting.
A Place at the Table
What does pay-what-you-can mean? Customers have multiple options to pay and to pay it forward when they visit the cafe:
Pay the suggested price.
Pay less than the suggested price.
By volunteering with them for a meal.
All meal volunteers are appropriately matched to the function that best suits their abilities. Some may be working in the kitchen, others in the outside seated areas, and some may be doing tasks like washing windows, wiping tables, cleaning dishes, etc.
A Place at the Table accomplishes their mission in two ways.
We eat together. We are Raleigh's first pay-what-you-can cafe. Patrons from all walks of life come together to share a meal at our table.
We volunteer together. Over 80 people volunteer for their meal every day. They gain skills and connection each shift.
The cafe is not there to just feed people who can't afford to eat. The cafe is there for everyone regardless of a person's economic security. You can see people eating lunch together coming from opposite sides of the economic spectrum.
Giving people a choice, whether enjoying a waffle or eating a salad. Because it's not just about solving food insecurity but a broader approach to improving a person's well-being. Having a person be seen, not stuck in isolation and invisible, and having the members in your community there to support you if you need it. Having social interaction by talking to the person next to you offers the opportunity to show that you deserve to be seen.
Building a strong community can allow people to develop support systems and potentially bridge political polarization in the country by people understanding one another better.
It is not about looking at Twitter to gauge public opinion or having polls to tell us who we are. But about actually communicating with one another. To shift the needle from who we think the people in our community are. To who the people in our community actually are.
In the video below, you can hear Maggie's story of how she founded and built A Place at the Table.
Maggie does a fantastic job of telling the story of asking for help to build her non-profit. The tremendous value in forming connections and asking those connections for connections. These connections brought people on her team with skillsets she didn't have.
Conversation with Maggie Kane
The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Why is building and having a strong community important to you?
Maggie: Why is it important? I feel like we, and you may have seen me talk a lot too. But we're fighting food insecurity. But we're really fighting community insecurity and the need for community and that need to belong. Our core values are belonging, community, integrity, dignity, good food, and hospitality. So three of those are belonging, hospitality, and dignity, but also community. So four of them are the most important things we do. Because we feel like that is what life is about. That's what we need in life to thrive. There's been a lot of research and studies; you may have seen them showing that people are really lonely. And the biggest pandemic that we're facing right now is COVID. But the biggest epidemic is loneliness and the need for community and the need for people. If you have a solid community in your life if you have support, then then you can thrive, or you're closer to thriving, if you have people in your life that are surrounding you and loving you and vice versa.
One of the red herrings is that what you are doing is solely about food insecurity and not the larger impact on a person's well-being. So what is the impact on a person's well-being going to A Place at the Table compared to a soup kitchen?
Maggie: Yeah, absolutely. So soup kitchens are these people that do an incredible job. They feed hundreds of people daily, but that's their primary mission at a soup kitchen. And that's all they can do. They're feeding people really quickly to get them out the door. They have to make food in mass quantities because it's all day, and it's all they can do, right?
And I wouldn't even say nutritious. They're just trying to feed people the maximum amount of food and get them nutrition in their bodies and things like that. We here have the awesome fortune and the ability to provide people with choices. Allowing people to choose what they eat. So they get to decide if they want one day to have a fresh local salad. Or if they want to eat a chicken and bacon ranch sandwich, all made with very fresh ingredients, all of which have some sort of nutritional value.
So that's important. We're able to also do that. So the choice also provides a meal that is chef prepared. And, I can't say it's healthy because who decides what healthy is? It's made with good ingredients and is to order. So those are the two food-related items. And the third thing is that there's just so much dignity here. When you walk in the door, you immediately feel seen. There's a door greeter there to make sure you know the concept. And if you've been here before, then you order, and someone at the register remembers you and calls you by name.
And you just really feel seen. The most common review we always get is, "Yeah, it just shows a warmth in here every time you walk in." And so the warmth factor is that we're such a community that you immediately feel a part of when you walk in. The difference between that third and the fourth thing is that we're a hand-up, or I guess overall, you could say that we're a hand-up versus a hand-out. So you know, we don't give a free meal, nothing's free. You are asked to volunteer for your meal, pay for the meal, or use a table place card, which is like a gift card or free meal. So you can go and get it and come back and eat with us or with someone who might hand you one or gift you one. So you asked who has skin in the game, essentially, and not living in a weird capitalistic way. But more like, we asked you to be a part of what we're doing. So that hand up or hand out is not a free meal. You are here because you want to be a part of it. So you're either going to be a part of one of our non-profit partners, you're paying something, or you're volunteering for your meal.
Evan: You mentioned in one interview that you don't want it to be like you have to work to get your meal. It's not a one-on-one equivalent of working for your food, but everyone's working together to provide food.
Maggie: That's it. That's it. Going back to that community piece of everything we're doing, we're building community. So whether we're eating together at large tables or volunteering together. Right now, we've got three people volunteering for their meals and three just volunteering because they want to or have signed up to volunteer regularly. So, we really like it because it's such an interesting mix and group of people.
And everyone, everyone, everyone…
Sorry, I got distracted by where I am. Because I'm essentially like, I'm in charge [at A Place at the Table]. Someone called out, "What happened?" But we've got all these cameras up here. So if you look over there, it's like, "Oh, my God, is there a fire breaking out?"
So, that community piece, Terry, is launching for his meal right now. He's in the district with Bob, who comes in every Tuesday morning. That's his shift. And they're chatting. I just went back there, and they're talking, and Terry has his music playing and all that, and they're getting to know each other.
And so that's how we're different. We're providing a space where you feel like you're a part of something. You feel like you have value. You feel like you're not having to work for your meal because we think that that's the way it should be. But it's because we want you to be a part of what we're doing to build community and get to know people. We have, and I think you were alluding to this earlier about asking for a certain situation. Our person who runs and gets the food plates together. She called out, so I trained someone who volunteers all the time with us, and he loves it. He started volunteering for his meal. And you could tell he's super quiet. It's great. I didn't really say much. And then he's been here every single day. He actually just moved into a new place. And it's pretty far away. But he told us a couple of weeks ago that he wants to work here. So he submitted his resume and application, and he's been here every day since before we opened to help volunteer. Even though he lives so far away, I just trained him on how to put the food together, and he's already got it, and he's asking about what I did this weekend. So that is what we're doing: building this community where people feel really comfortable and feels like they're a part of the community. And it's, it's essentially your family.
What do you feel the government or non-profits may not understand about food insecurity that you have learned about over the past seven years?
Maggie: What would the government not understand? Well, I think there's a big misconception, say governments and people. I think there's a big misconception that people in poverty it's either their fault, they're on drugs, they're alcoholics, or they're lazy. And that's just not true. This particular person I was telling you about is far from lazy. He's not using substances or drinking. And this is what I see. Whether someone hasn't been able to take care of their mental health because it's expensive. And there are just not a ton of programs for folks. Or whether they have simply reached rock bottom. And they had a lack of relationships in their life to pick them up. A lot of us struggle with mental health. A lot of us can seek out help. We're fortunate that we can go to a doctor and get prescribed medicine. We can. It's easy to access. We have insurance. So on the mental health piece, it's just not as easy. There are so many different things. There are so many different programs and things to navigate for people living in poverty, and you kind of have to choose your priority, whether you're going to feed yourself or whether you're going to go get medicine. And then, once you're stuck in the cycle of poverty, it's expensive to be poor. So you're stuck.
And you're then having to go, "Okay, well, now, I'm choosing to feed myself. So my lights go out, my light bill goes off, and my lights go out.” So now it's like, "Okay, what do I do now?" And now, "I'm going to try to pay for my lights." But then, oh my god, now this other bill has happened. This other bill comes up. So you get stuck in this cycle of poverty, and it's really hard to get out of it. It's like, I mean, truly, it's like someone's smashing you on top of you. And you can't, you can't rise above it. I think the third thing is also a lack of relationships, which I briefly mentioned, and no consecutive order. Still, I learned this from the first organization I worked at many, many years ago. These folks are experiencing poverty. It's not again. It's not a lazy issue. It's not a drug issue. It's a lack of relationship issue. I have 20 people I can call right now who would let me stay on their couch. A lot of folks are experiencing poverty from, whether life has been crazy. Things have happened. They have a lack of relationships and support. Community is so important that they don't necessarily have those people that they can go call on for help.
It seems like an excellent opportunity to have support systems within the restaurant for things like health insurance information. Do you feel like that's manipulative, or is it "working" people? I also think that one of the things my mind jumps into is how you measure those support systems' results and, in general, other impacts you have. Still, it seems like it's not about measurements of impact. It's about treating people as people, not just data points. Are these your thoughts as well?
Maggie: Yeah, treating people like people is what we measure. We measure success in relationship building. I'm sure we measure people coming in and eating, but relationships are the key to what we do. And if we're living our core values every single day by providing people with resources and things like that, we will certainly tell them about the resources and things that exist, but if they don't ask, we're not pushing it on them at all. They have to come to us. This is a safe place. You get to be who you are here. We are not going to push any sort of anything on you. But if you have questions, come and ask us.
We do bring in our partners. We're very fortunate to partner with a lot of organizations. So we'll bring in organizations to host little tables. You know, we have an insurance person that works with Medicaid. She comes once a week. She puts a table outside, and people stop to chat with her about it. So we'll do that. Different non-profits will come to the A Place at the Table. If anyone wants to stop by there, they can. But again, it's not. We're not forcing anything down your throat. We're not telling you what you have to do. This is a safe place. We do community and food. That's it. We're not mission creeping on anything else. That is what we are doing here. And we're not going to try to be anything else. If you ask us for clothes, we're giving you the number of someone else.
Do you want people to adopt this similar pay-what-you-can model in their own communities? And do you feel like it's scalable as a franchise?
Maggie: There are about 15 other pay-what-you-can non-profit restaurants across the country. And they're all very different. We all have different names, missions, hours, foods, teams, and things like that. So do I think that other places can do this? Absolutely. They do. We think that we have developed a model that works in an urban downtown setting. So we do think it's scalable. We do think people could learn from us and do this. Do we think we're the right ones to do it? No, we don't think there needs to be A Place at the Table in Durham. Where are you living again?
Evan: Rhode Island.
Maggie: We think people in Rhode Island need to call us to come down. Learn from us and work with every single person on our team, from our chef to our operations director to me, to our volunteer manager to our volunteers. And then take it back up to their community and create what the town needs. They come out of communities. It took us four years to build what we have. So they really come out of the community you're in. You know your community, the non-profits, the folks in poverty, we don't live in Rhode Island. So we really think that it's definitely teachable, trainable, and scalable. But you come and learn from us, and then we'll help you understand what we do. We finally figured it out. I mean, it is not easy at all. This is the hardest thing I have ever done and will ever do. And like I said, I showed up at seven o'clock. I'm like having to put food together and things like that, and my role as executive director, like, I don't need to be doing that. But it's a restaurant, and that's what you do. So it's the hardest thing ever, and you need very committed people.
What do you hope will be the future of food insecurity and community building in the US in the next 10 years? And what do you feel the most significant challenges will be?
Maggie: Isn't the answer that no one is hungry? No one should be hungry. We have so many resources in this country.
But that also every single human has dignity and is seen and supported by a community. Again, I think it's so important. And I think we need people to succeed and to thrive and to live better lives with other people. Life is better in community. So I hope folks can come together in various places, ways, and situations. And can really see each other and understand each other. There's currently a significant divide between people with wealth and people experiencing poverty. So, I think it's places like A Place at the Table that there will be more places that bring communities, all different kinds of communities, together.
Evan: So do you feel like there are many formats of A Place at the Table?
Maggie: I have actually been talking to a lot of people that are starting a pay-what-you-can for different things all across the country. Whether it's photography or pay-what-you-can wellness classes. So making what we do more inclusive, making what we are privileged to have access to more accessible to everyone. I would love to see that where we had pay-what-you-can everything essentially.
Evan: People might say, "I would love to incorporate a pay-what-you-can model, but can I afford this?" What advice would you give people who want to ensure that their business or non-profit can still be sustainable and positively impact the community?
Maggie: It definitely comes out of the community. So, going back to that, you cannot do this alone. We are not sustainable. So you have to have the community's backing and support behind you. You have to have people. Another cool thing about what we do is that everyone can be involved, from people who are dining, donating, or volunteering. So this has to come from the community. Everyone needs to own this and support it with everything, from the folks that show up to volunteer every day. And to the folks that are giving free legal help or the folks that are donating produce. It comes out of the community, and you must have those community relationships to make this happen. Before we opened, everything we spent from 2014 to 2018 was a fundraising effort. So I'm making friends that make this happen every single day. You have to have the community's backing. We have to fundraise a significant portion of our budget. About 40% of our budget to make this place happen on top of what we generate in the cafe. So I think to sum it up, you have to have community support behind you. Does that answer your question?
Evan: No, it does very well. I think that one of the things that I think people would say is, "let's just have a day where we do pay-what-you-can," but I think what you're saying is that it is much more than that and that you have to ask for help. You can't just lead by yourself.
Maggie: You know, you have to ask for help. It's too, too difficult if you don't ask for help. And you have to be okay with asking for help. And people are going to tell you no, but ask again and keep asking. People want to be a part of things. People want to feel a part of a community, so more than likely, you will find people that want to be involved. And people are always looking to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And so you've just got to ask, and if they say no, they say no. But you can't do community projects like this alone. It is a thousand percent not me. It's my staff of 20 or 150 weekly volunteers, our 50 people who volunteer for their meals every day. It's our corporate donors who step in and help us fundraise. It's our Raleigh city farm that gives us produce at a very substantial discount. I guess I could say it's everyone that chips in to make this place happen.
One of the biggest takeaways from my conversation with Maggie was what it means to be a community leader. What occurred to me during my conversation with Maggie is that being a community leader is not just about being a leader. It's also about being a part of the community. It is about bringing people together and being a part of the people. It's not an ego trip. It's about knowing that helping people requires asking for help.
Making a positive change in a community means asking for help from people in the community.
I also found that the mention of having a singular focus for the cafe was helpful. In particular, the quote below that Maggie said about "mission creep" was interesting.
“We do community and food. That's it. We're not mission creeping on anything else. That is what we are doing here. And we're not going to try to be anything else.” -Maggie Kane
There is always talk about scale and growing to get bigger and bigger. But what about being content with the great work you are doing in the community you know?
Another thing Maggie mentioned reminds me of a book I’ve been meaning to read. A book by Keith Payne called “The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die”
“Every single human has dignity and is seen and supported by a community. Again, I think it's so important. And I think that I think we need people to succeed and to thrive and to live better lives with other people.” -Maggie Kane
Providing community gives people relationships and a support system to break out of the cycle of poverty.
That could mean having someone drive you to a procedure at a hospital. Or to sleep on their couch, as Maggie mentioned, when you are in a particularly tough spot. Or it can also just mean having someone listen to you and describe your week.
Building a future where business owners can incorporate a pay-what-you-can model into their business to improve their community.
When Maggie mentioned that she is working with others to teach their success of a pay-what-you-can model. I immediately imagined a kind of incubator or mentorship program where people could learn from each other to improve their own communities. I look forward to seeing the potential of pay-what-you-can emerging through businesses and other non-profits.
On an ending note, one of the things I found working in healthcare is that there is a singular focus on making a patient healthier. And there really isn't a question of why? Why be healthy? Is it to reduce costs for the hospital? Reduce costs for the insurer? To make the lives of clinicians easier? Sure. But I think something is to be said about why a person should be healthy. And I think the singular focus of being healthy is to enjoy our lives. It sounds obvious, but I think we forget that often. Relationships and the community we live in have frequently been cited as the most meaningful and greatest joy in people's lives. Do we ever really ask what people in communities need and want? Perhaps there should be a greater focus on the well-being of people before developing more healthcare apps that measure this or that. Or developing more complex healthcare payment models that do not really see people.
Visit Downton Raleigh ( 300 W Hargett St #50, Raleigh, NC 27601 ) or donate! If you or someone you know would like to start a pay-what-you-can service, contact info@tableraleigh.org and/or visit their location. ( Website | Menu | Instagram )
I’ve got a lot more coming this year from The Future As It Should Be. I always welcome topics you’d love for me to cover and to continue the conversation on this article, so reach out anytime to @evanbrociner on Twitter.