Community Cafe Exploratory Committee to Host Information Session

The Appalachia Festival, an annual event held at Frostburg State University, has gone virtual this year in observance of health and safety guidelines. The lineup, as promising as ever, will feature a number of community discussions as part of their Saturday, September 19 programming. One of those discussions entitled, “Creating a Community Cafe in Allegany County” will be held by an exploratory steering committee with a bold new idea.

Their idea, a “donate-what-you-can cafe” has been the topic of discussion among the group of organizers for well over a year. Chairwoman of the Committee Val Llewellyn, a retired Allegany County Public School teacher, and Dr. Elesha Ruminski, coordinator of the Communication Leadership Lab at Frostburg State University, say that the idea was presented by a community member who had visited the Grace Cafe in Danville, Kentucky and insisted that the concept could work in Allegany County, as well.

After first hearing of the model, Llewellyn traveled to another “pay-what-you-can” cafe called Open Door Cafe in Wytheville, Virginia. “I really loved the concept and thought it would be a good project for us,” she says. To learn more, the group invited one of the leaders of the Open Door Cafe to Cumberland, and in Fall 2019, the group convened to begin planning the restaurant.

“As part of our research, our committee decided to use the guidance of One World, Everybody Eats,” says Ruminski. One World, Everybody Eats is a non-profit dedicated to increasing food security and building community through the pay-what-you-can nonprofit restaurant model. Its founder, Denise Cerreta, accepted the 2017 James Beard Humanitarian of the Year Award on behalf of the numerous cafes that the organization runs.

From this research, the group decided to initiate a dedicated exploratory committee which will hopefully evolve into an advisory board as the project continues to solidify. “We’ve been investigating this for a long time,” says Ruminski, “and the details are still very fluid. That’s why we are hosting this discussion. We don’t yet know what this will look like in Allegany County, but we want people to come and be with us and help us.”

Llewellyn says the committee has made a few decisions, nonetheless. “We have identified Downtown Cumberland as our location and we plan to concentrate on locally-sourced food,” she says. The Community Cafe will be open for one meal a day, five days a week, from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. reports Llewellyn.

Though the business model for the Allegany County Community Cafe remains consistent with the “pay-what-you-can” model, the group prefers to call it “donate-as-you-can.” Despite the possible connotations with that phrase, Llewellyn says, “I don’t want people to think of this as a soup kitchen. This will be an inviting space to all people, those who can afford to pay and those who cannot, but this will be a nice restaurant where we can build community.”

Ruminski says there will be a community table where neighbors can dine together and the organizers plan to host several events throughout the year geared toward creating meaningful conversation. “In our organizational discussions, we see an educational component to the cafe,” she says. Llewellyn agrees, “we are thinking about our community post-COVID and we want to support the local community as much as possible.” Other potential plans include establishing a community garden. 

“We want people to co-create,” says Ruminski, “and we want the cafe to be a hub for both facilitated and informal connections, but it’s going to take investment by a number of different people.” As of now, the organizers have yet to identify a specific space in Downtown and they’re looking to recruit new members to their advisory board including local farmers, a dietician, and a Certified Public Accountant. Which isn’t to say that many haven’t already stepped up; in fact, representatives from several local restaurants and from Allegany College of Maryland have joined the committee. 

“We are really looking for people to come with their ideas,” says Ruminski. The group hopes to begin grant writing and fundraising in the coming months, and are planning to partner with existing non-profit groups in order to fast-track their opening.

“Our event with the Appalachian Festival is our hope that others will connect with us,” says Ruminski. “My hope is that students get involved, that educators get involved, and that we can include lots of volunteers in our efforts,” she says. “We have a very active committee,” echoes Llewelyn, “and we just want to be sure to include people.”

To learn more about the Allegany County Community Cafe, tune into their event on Saturday, September 19 at 10:00 a.m. Pre-registration is required at the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrf-6rqjkjHdXRFEBPKY4Ps23mmixDEDpl?fbclid=IwAR2EvMy60zOfJKboT2I6GWTqnyxPAcIEbdJjpA-xjJIxgg9_L_AdwsUwUNQ

For additional details, contact Dr. Elesha Ruminski at Elruminski@frostburg.edu.

To learn more about the Appalachia Festival, check out their website.