Starting Sunday, November 16, Alpha Pie – located at 157 E Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, companion business to The Gathering Place, which can be found on the second floor of the same building – will be hosting and providing a series of Community Sunday Dinners to anyone and everyone, absolutely free.
The dinner on Sunday, 11/16, is taking place from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Volunteers are needed, with arrival window to prepare for service between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m.
For the Community Sunday Dinner series, Alpha Pie’s kitchen will be serving multi-course, chef-driven meals and offering take-away. For as long as there’s food in the kitchen, there will be food on the plates of our neighbors. These dinners are an intentional effort to strengthen community ties and provide a sense of comfort, dignity and safety in the simple act of sharing a meal.
No restrictions, no limitations and no strings. Menus in the works include bánh mì sandwiches, daal and flatbread, smoked brisket and more nutritious, filling, genuinely great food prepared by volunteers in our kitchen.
By leveraging existing relationships with local suppliers and farmers, Alpha Pie is in a unique position to minimize food waste and maximize local impact by purchasing overstock from local agricultural efforts and putting previously unused food directly to the plates of the people who need it most.
Local free dinner programs, such as the one by IFC, cover most of the week, but Sunday evening is a gap currently unfilled. More than that, Sunday dinner is a well-worn tradition for families across the world.
Tight on budget this week? Come get a meal.
Can’t qualify for food assistance because you make too much money, but not enough to not be broke? Come get a meal.
Lost your job and want to save money to get through the rut? Come get a meal.
Experiencing homelessness? Come get a meal.
College kid working two jobs and going to school? Come get a meal.
The food quality doesn’t change. The service doesn’t change. All comers, every community dinner, served just as you would be served going out to eat at a restaurant. At our restaurant. Welcome home.
Anyone interested in contributing, or volunteering, can reach out directly to:
Joshua Goodsell (owner of Alpha Pie and The Gathering Place)
mohawk@thegatheringplacegames.com
Victor Lewis (TGP communications director)
victor@thegatheringplacegames.com.
Another initiative, beginning concurrently with the Community Sunday Dinner series at Alpha Pie is a neighborhood food pantry. Similar to the Community Dinner, the goal is to provide no-barrier access to shelf-stable groceries and fresh produce – as often as possible, to as many people as possible.
Many food pantries and community resources aiming to assist with food insecurity do so with restrictions, limitations and conditions that prevent people from getting the help they need. The Rosemary Street Pantry will provide access to bags of groceries to anyone who asks. No paperwork, no ID, just fresh food provided as much as we can, to as many as we can.
Hours at the Rosemary Street Pantry will also extend later than most, providing access to food beyond business hours and opening up service and assistance to working people. Collections and organization for the Rosemary Street Pantry and currently happening, and the current hope is to formally open for people to pick up bags of groceries starting on December 1, any time The Gathering Place or Alpha Pie are open.
Alpha Pie, and The Gathering Place, are both for-profit businesses. Without the restrictions, limitations and liabilities of an organization formally structured to provide services like this, we are comparatively free to do more, directly. We’re free to give food away to anyone, at any time, without any limitation by donor funds or tax classification as to the who, the how or the why.
This flexibility means we’re distinctly not comfortable with accepting monetary donations at this time, because there is not a way to separate the finances of these efforts from our day-to-day business. To that end, we ask anyone interested in helping us feed our friends, neighbors and everyone in our community directly support this initiative with food donations or by volunteering to help us both inside and outside the kitchen.
It’s tough out there for a lot of folks, but we are hoping by taking on this project we can bring a little extra warmth to our neighborhood as the weather gets colder. We’re going to do as much as we can, for as long as we can – because everyone deserves to eat, and eat well.
Leave a Reply