Serving Up Big Helpings of Dignity : Cafe Offers the Homeless Taste of Real Hospitality
There are waiters, menus and on the tables, fresh-cut flowers. Patrons have their choice of such appetizing entrees and desserts as beef Burgundy and chocolate cheesecake. And reservations are a must.
It’s not another trendy Atlanta restaurant but the 458 Cafe--a diner for the poor and homeless in the battered downtown “Sweet Auburn” neighborhood. The cafe wants to do more than fill empty stomachs. It tries to restore its patrons’ lives by giving them big helpings of dignity and self-respect--something that they rarely find in traditional soup kitchens.
Serving Hospitality
“We’re serving hospitality, community, brotherhood and sisterhood,” said the Rev. A. B. Short, 43, a Southern Baptist minister and social activist who helped found the 28-seat diner that may be the first of its kind for the homeless in the nation.
The cafe, which began operation last month and is open six days a week for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., is in a one-story brick building on Edgewood Avenue that once served as a drive-in liquor store.
From the moment the homeless patrons approach the building, they know that they are in for a different experience. The outside has been renovated in an eye-catching Art Deco style in pink, mauve and sea-foam green.
Inside, patrons sit in a sunny, air-conditioned dining room with white Formica-topped tables and colorful curtains at the window. Cheery volunteer waiters take orders for the food, which is served on real plates--not paper or plastic. The menu each day features a choice of two entrees, three side dishes and two desserts plus a wide selection of beverages. There is no charge to patrons.
“This place is like heaven,” said Lela Hadsell, 66, who has been living under a viaduct and gets her one square meal of the day at the cafe.
“I don’t have to stand in line two or three hours, I don’t have to walk up 16-dozen steps and I don’t have to settle for soup and sandwiches.”
Terry Pettigrew, 38, an unemployed truck driver from Chicago who was leaving for a job interview after a hearty lunch of shepherd’s pie, said: “I’ll be in a much better mood now to go job hunting. Your morale is important when you’re homeless. This place makes you want to get back into the mainstream.”
That, according to Short, is the whole idea of the restaurant.
“If we can get people to have meals together in a relaxed atmosphere like this, then we can build personal relationships and develop a sense of trust that will help us in dealing with their problems,” he said.
Plans are for the cafe eventually to serve as a multipurpose resource center that will offer legal services, support groups for alcoholics and drug abusers and weekly visits by a mobile health clinic.
Short said he also hopes to expand the meal hours to include breakfast and dinner.
Reservations Required
Reservations for meals are required because staff members are trying to build a steady clientele of homeless people they can get to know so that they can determine their needs beyond food. About 25 people have been signed up so far from homeless shelters and a nearby day-labor center. The reservations are good for several weeks.
Keith Summa, project director of the New York-based National Coalition for the Homeless, said the cafe is probably the only one of its kind serving full-course meals for the homeless in a restaurant atmosphere.
“It’s a magnificent idea,” he said. “One thing so often forgotten is that the homeless haven’t just lost their homes but often they have lost their dignity as well. This type of facility gives that back. You are treated like a person.”
James Cooley, 33, a recent patron at the 458 Cafe, underscored that observation. “It’s been a month or two since anybody took my order--and that was at the Dunk ‘n’ Dine,” he said. “This place gives you back your self-esteem and makes you want to do better. In fact, I’m looking forward to the day I can come back and work as a volunteer.”
The idea for the cafe grew out of a chance remark to Short two years ago by Bobby Freeman, a retired businessman who is board chairman of the Atlanta Community Food Bank.
Freeman had worked as a volunteer at one of Atlanta’s big soup kitchens but was disappointed at the drab impersonality of the place and the lack of interaction between the staff and the clients.
“Wouldn’t it be great if there were someplace where the homeless could sit down and be served a meal with more dignity?” he asked Short one day as he was recounting his experiences.
Grants Aid Renovation
“Let’s open a restaurant for these people,” replied Short, who is head of a nonprofit religious group that is known as the Community of Hospitality and is based in suburban Decatur, where Short lives.
Renovation work on the cafe began last November with the help of $30,000 in state and federal grants and an additional $35,000 worth of material donations such as air-conditioning equipment and kitchen gear. The building, which is behind the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial center on Auburn Avenue, required a top-to-bottom overhaul. Much of the work was done by volunteer workers, including several homeless people.
“You should have seen this place when we first walked in,” said Freeman, who helped with the rehabilitation work and now pitches in as a volunteer waiter at the new cafe. “It had been abandoned for 20 years and you couldn’t see the floor for all the trash and junk that was piled up.”
The cafe operates with an all-volunteer staff and with donations of food and money from governmental agencies and private organizations and individuals.
“All of us are only one or two mortgage payments away from homelessness anyway,” Ife (pronounced Ee-fay) Clarke, owner of a residential maid service, said in explaining her involvement as a volunteer worker at the cafe. “For me, working here is right on time.”
Short said the cafe’s anticipated operating budget is about $32,000 a year, which includes a monthly mortgage payment of $1,000.
Calls From Other Cities
He has already begun receiving calls from other cities interested in setting up projects on his model.
“We’re not going to replace soup kitchens entirely,” he said. “But we can offer an alternative. And you can get the money and support for this kind of venture if you can articulate what it is you want to do.”
His biggest battle now is fighting the “American urge for bigness and numbers,” he said.
“We don’t want to get any bigger here,” he explained. “We’re interested in the quality of the interaction--not the quantity.”
