Raleigh nonprofit restaurant A Place at the Table will open expansion in spring 2020
When Tyson Foods called A Place at the Table one Wednesday morning, executive director Maggie Kane had to be blunt.
“I said, ‘We don’t have a kitchen, so we can’t cook or sell chicken,” Kane said.
Tyson wasn’t trying to sell her chicken; it wasn’t that kind of phone call.
Instead, the Raleigh nonprofit restaurant was the recipient of a $30,000 donation, part of a $50 million giving campaign from Tyson Foods, aimed at charities working to address issues of hunger and food insecurity.
“It’s a huge help,” Kane said.
A Place at the Table will celebrate its second anniversary in January and is currently in the midst of a major expansion. The restaurant is adding 2,000 square feet, 50 more seats and a commercial kitchen, with a stovetop, oven and hood. Currently, the menu at A Place at the Table is limited to only what can be made with toasters and waffle irons, or served cold.
The expansion means fried bacon and scrambled eggs will be a possibility for the first time, along with biscuit sandwiches.
The nonprofit restaurant opened in January 2018 and asks diners to pay the full price for meals, to pay what they can or to volunteer their time. On Thanksgiving morning last week, Kane said the restaurant had no prices and largely gave away food for 250 people.
“It was exactly what Thanksgiving is supposed to be like,” Kane said. “We really have become Raleigh’s community cafe, a place where all different kinds of people, from all over, can come together and build this community.”
A Place at the Table has been the beneficiary of a number of large donations, including new Raleigh grocery store Weaver Street Market sponsoring more than 12,000 meal tokens.
A successful first year
Kane expects the expansion at A Place at the Table to be finished by the spring, in March or April. It means taking over the next door space that was formerly the Alli boutique. Kane hoped to have construction done by the end of the year, but delays have set the project back three or four months, she said.
But the restaurant itself is showing no signs of slowing down. In its first year, A Place at the Table gave away more than 8,000 meals. Kane said it had already provided 11,000 meals by the end of October this year.
“For one, the expansion means we’ll have space for a ton more people,” Kane said. “(In year three) I just hope we’ll continue to thrive and bring people together. We have so many wonderful supporters, and they’re the only reason we’re able to expand at all.”
