By Didi Brown, Board Member

Hi there! My name is Didi Brown and I am a new board member of the Fricke Episcopal Food Ministry (FEFM). I have 45 years of experience in food service and so I was delighted when I was asked to be on the board of the FEFM.

Up until early 2019, the Dean Fricke food pantry stored food in Trinity Cathedral’s basement. They often raised more money than they could use, and so donated funds to other pantries and agencies. In 2018 the board decided to shift operations to exclusively making Food Security Grants and have now made about a dozen such grants.

One of the grants has gone to Table Grace Ministries, which runs a café at 1611 ½ Farnam Street. In 2020, this grant helped to pay for 300 meals from the café and the food truck they also operate.

I went to visit Matt Weber at the café and we had a nice conversation. As you can see from the pictures, it is small and the menu varies daily. That is because 90% of their food is donated from Saving Grace Perishable Food Rescue, which rescues perishable food and delivers it to nonprofit agencies to feed their clients. Despite the similarity in names, they are not related and Table Grace Ministry was started first.

I had a lunch of their Southwest Chicken Rice Bowl, a salad with a big dollop of babaganoush, (I didn’t want the soup), and delicious coffee. It was just the right amount of food and was served on china with rolled silver. I even had flowers on the table.

Clients are not charged – there are no prices posted – but asked what they want to contribute. This can be a ten-dollar donation, or, as in the case of one customer who came in while I was there, ten minutes of volunteering to work a small job. This is consistent with their philosophy to give a hand up, not a hand out; to empower, not to enable, and allows all customers to have dignity and self-respect when they leave. They are open from 11:00 A.M. – 2:00 P.M. Monday-Saturday.

I asked Matt how COVID-19 had affected business and he admitted that, whereas before COVID-19 the clientele had been local business people as well as the lower class, now it was almost exclusively low to no income clients. The pandemic has also increased his labor costs because he had to cut his volunteer labor and increase paid labor. Also, there is hardly any catering now, which had been a mainstay for them. Their catering, by the way, will come to your home, serve a meal, and has waitstaff that can serve plated meals (pre-pandemic) for any number. Most of this staff are volunteers. So, if you are thinking of having a catered event, either at home or work, please keep them in mind.

I got to talk to one of the staff who is a real success story and role model for Table Grace Ministry. Mary, lived homeless with her emotional support dog for four years after getting involved in drugs. She had even been a customer at Table Grace, but it wasn’t until after her arrest and sentence to drug court, that she was sentenced to community service for two and a half years. She chose Table Grace Café because they had been so good to her when she was homeless and is now a paid employee.

Table Grace has a very good website with lots more information. They also have a Wish List of things that can be purchased on Amazon.