Cafe Serves Homeless for Self-Improvement Vow
At the Inspiration Cafe, customers always walk out without settling their bills: They’re required to pay a higher price for their meals than cash.
The restaurant caters to the down-and-out. It trades free meals for a pledge from homeless people to improve their lives.
“If we can give them the support that they need, they can go back to being productive members of society,” reasons Caryn Ex, a psychotherapist who is president of the cafe’s board of directors.
Harry Trapp, who has been treated for heroin addiction, is among the restaurant’s more than 200 patrons in its first year. Its volunteers “force you to think of dignity at the same time you’re saying you have a problem,” Trapp said over a meal of refried beans and rice.
Trapp is now studying social studies and psychology at college. He also works as a security guard and as a support counselor at a homeless shelter and has an apartment, thanks in part to connections made through the volunteers.
Homeless people get monthly passes to gain entrance into the North Side restaurant, which has waiters, a chef, and floral-pattern curtains and tablecloths. The pass is revoked if organizers don’t see evidence that patrons are taking steps to improve their lives.
That step can be getting a job, finding an apartment, undergoing substance abuse treatment, even going to the dentist. Some come back every day for three or four months while they’re getting back on their feet.
Lisa Nigro, a former police officer who opened the restaurant, modeled it on one in Atlanta called Cafe 458.
She plays down her role, saying she was “just lucky to be there.”
“The bottom line is that I’m not a saint. I’m a regular person,” she said. “Anyone else could do it.”
Besides serving a daily breakfast and dinner on the weekends, the cafe offers weekly seminars about such topics as confidence-building and how to dress when applying for a job. On some weeknights, there are Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
The board’s plans include starting a small business, such as a bakery, where restaurant patrons could get on-the-job training. The cafe is funded by donations from individuals, corporations and foundations.
And other such restaurants may appear across the nation. A group from Iowa City, Iowa, has plans to visit the restaurant before starting one of its own, and a South Carolina group hopes to copy Atlanta’s Cafe 458, Nigro said.
Trapp is on his way to “alumni” status, but the Inspiration Cafe will not quickly be forgotten.
“I love it,” he said. “I would shout it from the top of the Sears Tower.”
