Since she was a child volunteering at soup kitchens and food pantries with her parents, Maggie Kane has carried a question: “Why was I on this side? Why am I so lucky?”
The invisible line that separated those who served and those who received inspired her to create a space where no one has to stand on either side.
“My work and life passion is working with folks who are experiencing homelessness. I just knew at an early age,” Kane said. “While in college at N.C. State, I started volunteering at a day shelter working with folks on the street and fell in love with folks, and they fell in love with me.”
During her volunteering she began to see the line of separation more glaringly — especially when it came to food.
“I realized that there are great places for people with money and great places for people without money, but there isn’t that space for people to bridge those walls and barriers and see each other as human,” she said.
She then discovered the pay-what-you-can model — where guests can pay the suggested price, pay what they could, contribute to the price of another diner’s meal or volunteer in exchange. She remembered thinking, “If other places can do this, if other towns can do this, we can too.”
So she found the nearest cafe operating with the model, in Boone, and went to visit. F.A.R.M. Café, which opened in 2012, welcomed her with open arms, and she returned five or six times to learn more. In 2018, Kane founded Raleigh’s first pay-what-you-can cafe, A Place at the Table, where anyone can come, eat and feel at home.
The café is easy to find at 300 W. Hargett St. in downtown Raleigh, with brightly colored chalk drawings covering the sidewalk out front. The storefront patio features several pastel blue bistro chairs and a black and white Open sign hanging from the front door. The front counter is warmly lit with pendant lights, and the chefs work just beyond.
The dining area brings new meaning to farm-to-table, with murals of sunflowers in summer skies. There are tables of all sizes, each decorated with a small vase filled with flowers.
Not just people on the streets
One of the recommendations Kane first put into action was creating a community advisory board of people with experience of food insecurity and homelessness, and people who work with that population. The community advisory board helped make informed decisions on A Place at the Table’s design and menu.
What took shape was more than a café. It was a place where a hot meal comes with things that are harder to find: dignity, connection and a chance to sit at the same table.
“People really need each other in life. Life is hard in itself, and if we don’t have community in each other, then what do we have?” Kane said. “It’s very easy to only be around the people that look like you, feel like you, touch like or smell like you and are in your same circles, but we learn so much from people who are different than us.”
That connection can help dispel any assumptions made about those experiencing housing or food insecurity, according to Kane.
“Food insecurity, housing insecurity looks like so many things, and it is not just people on the streets,” she said. “We see everyone, and honestly the majority of folks that we see who are food insecure are paycheck to paycheck. They are not living outside. They’re the working poor.”
Looking around the café filled with the hum of conversation and the warm smell of homemade breakfast, Kane took a moment and began to identify different people’s circumstances. From a worker who lost their job at IBM and has aged out of technology, a student at N.C. State working several jobs to afford school and housing, a painter who spent his whole life building his painting company but can’t afford to live in anything but a rooming house.
The circumstances can vary, she said, but A Place at the Table offers an opportunity for everyone — no matter their economic background — to connect over a shared meal.
“It connects us all. Food is a tool. Food is the one thing that we all have in common, so food is a way for people to connect,” Kane said. “Food builds community and builds relationships. People need food, and we’re at that point. The connection piece — I beg to say that we also need that. But more importantly, people need food.”
Increasing need
That need can be seen in the growing number of people in line for a meal. Before the pandemic, the café saw a 70/30 split among patrons, with 70 percent paying the suggested price and 30 percent paying less or volunteering. It has since flipped, with 75 percent of patrons paying less or volunteering and the remainder paying the suggested price, Kane said.
She contributed some of the change to increased exposure and word of mouth, the rest to growing food insecurity. A Place at the Table has served over 5,000 family meals since 2024, according to its website. Just this month it experienced its busiest week in the almost eight years it’s been open.
“We know a lot of people are going to be hurting. We know a lot of folks that are on SNAP come, but we also know there are a lot of people that don’t come to us because they have benefits right now,” Kane said.
While benefits were restored in full earlier this month after a confusing back and forth court battle between the Trump administration and several states who sued during the federal government shutdown, more impacts are looming.
The Department of Agriculture has been directing states to implement new guidance as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law in July. Some of those changes to SNAP include the following:
- The upper age limit for those who need to meet work requirements was raised from age 54 to 64 for the first time for able-bodied adults without dependents. This means older adults — who often struggle to find jobs — will need to find employment to qualify.
- Exemption for parents or other family members with a dependent younger than 18 will be changed to be for families with someone under 14 years old.
- Exemptions were also removed for homeless individuals, veterans and young adults who were in foster care when they turned age 18.
The mounting pressure has prompted Kane and her team to consider two things.
“We are trying to figure out, ‘How do we continue to feed people, not turn people away, but still be here in three years?’” she asked. “And I think that that’s probably what a lot of people are talking about.”
This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
