SAME Café

SAME Café's mission is to create community through healthy food access. SAME Café's Vision Statement: We exist So All May Eat nutritious and delicious food with dignity. The need for people to have access to locally grown, nourishing food led Brad and Libby Birky to establish So All May Eat (SAME) Café in October of 2006. The mission then, as it is today, is to create community through healthy food access. In this participation based Café, people can be nourished with dignity while contributing what they can – time, money, or produce – to support the operation of the Café. Healthy food access – the original issue SAME was founded to address – remains the SAME. The change in SAME leadership in 2017 energized SAME for growth. The development of the SAME Outreach Program and Cook to Work led to more community partnerships and outreach to more neighborhoods beyond the SAME Café East Colfax location.

SAME addresses the social challenge of food insecurity through SAME Café, Cook to Work, and Outreach Programs. SAME Café serves healthy food in a restaurant setting where people are nourished with dignity while contributing what they can to give back to their community. SAME Café serves as the base for Cook to Work, a flexible, seven-module, job-skills training program to promote economic stability – providing essential skills for success in the workplace, preparing participants for paid employment, enhancing their ability to obtain housing, and creating a path out of food insecurity and poverty to help prevent food insecurity in the future. SAME Outreach Program, through delivered meal partnerships, serve healthy food to people living in neighborhoods with limited food availability. The work that SAME Café does directly tackles the structural inequities that contribute to unequal health outcomes. By centering the voices of marginalized communities, SAME Café addresses the systemic factors that perpetuate food insecurity.