Local Spotlight: Common Ground Café
Above: Common Ground Café logo
Each month we feature a member of our community in our Compeer newsletter. For our June newsletter, we interviewed Nancy Hillman, executive director of Common Ground Café. We are so thankful to have had the chance to learn about the work Nancy is doing and are excited to share it with you all, as well. If you would like to sign up for our Compeer newsletter, click here.
Common Ground Café is a donate-what-you-can community café whose mission is to address food insecurity in Cleveland County. Through a growing network of “culinary artists, churches, local farmers, area businesses and volunteers,” Common Ground Café seeks to provide a space for anyone, “regardless of income, age, or status” to “dine with dignity.”
Nancy Hillman and her late husband began looking into starting a pay-what-you-can café in 2016. Through their research, they learned about the community café model created by One World Everybody Eats. Founded by Denise Cerrata, this model utilizes seven values that every community café should honor. In 2017, Nancy attended a One World Everybody Eats Summit and connected with FARM Café in Boone, which is another pay-what-you-can café inspired by the community café model. At FARM Café and other pay-what-you-can cafes in Charleston and Raleigh, Nancy learned about how these cafes run and the type of volunteer work needed to support them.
After receiving their 501c3 status in March of 2018, Common Ground Café decided to start doing pop-up events that were scheduled once a month and open to the community, with the first one being at Holly Oak Park. At that time, all the food was prepared by Common Ground Café or through sponsorships with restaurants or culinary staff.
When asked about her long term goals for Common Ground Café, Nancy explained that she wants to eventually open a restaurant and grow her volunteer base. To achieve the first goal, Nancy has focused a lot of her work on building community relationships with other organizations, restaurants, and people. According to Nancy, most restaurants fail within the first five years of opening, but with the help of a strong community network, Common Ground Café will be able to avoid this and address our community’s needs when it comes to food insecurity.
Earlier this year, Common Ground Café started a contract with the Boys and Girls Club that allowed Common Ground Café to develop and teach a healthy habits curriculum. This curriculum includes classes on nutrition, health habits to follow at home (such as knowing and keeping track of daily sugar intake), cooking opportunities, developing an herb garden under the instruction of a professional gardener, and even classes that allow members of the Boys and Girls Club to make their own meals.
Common Ground Café has also partnered with Central United Methodist Church, which has a soup kitchen that serves 200 people a week. On the last Saturday of every month, Common Ground Café cooks lunch at the end of every month.
Nancy’s second goal - recruiting more volunteers - is another necessary component of helping open a restaurant. Volunteers are needed for current projects, such as the work Nancy is doing at the Boys and Girls Club, but it will also be important to have once the restaurant opens. The community cafe model emphasizes the importance of having volunteers taking the place of hired staff members at the restaurant, which will help with the cost of running a community café.
Currently, Common Ground Café is looking for volunteers to help with cooking and catering (especially those who have experience with small and large servings), marketing, social media, and website design, community events, grant writing and fundraising, general food preparation, greeting and serving food at events, providing farming and gardening expertise, and assisting with children’s nutrition classes (ages 5-12). To offer support in any of these areas, you can connect with Nancy by calling 704-981-0991.
Click here to visit Common Ground Café’s Facebook page.
