86'ing Hunger with Acorn Community Cafe

Acorn Community Cafe in Eugene is a place where anyone can go to get nourishing food when they are hungry, even if you can't pay for it. There is a different special every week that is free of charge for any who ask for it. There is also a pay-it-forward system set up for folks who want to buy a neighbor some food. 

Miranda and Corey found extra time to feed their community when they were on furloughed during the onset of the pandemic.  The project that started in a park developed into a brick and mortar location in the last couple of years.  Now they also run a non-profit, called 86 Hunger Foundation, out of the same building which works to meet people's food needs. We speak about how this restaurant and non-profit developed, what brought them here, and what their hopes are for the future. 

If you would like to treat yourself, support them, or you are in need of some free food, go visit them at 769 Monroe St. in Eugene, Oregon.  Not only is the food vegan and delicious, the folks who prepare it are kind, the atmosphere is welcoming,  and you are supporting a great cause. 

Go to eatacorncafe.com for their hours or to order online.

For more information on the non-profit mission, donating, volunteering, or how to receive food, visit https://www.86hunger.org/. 

To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.

Transcript

Hana Francis: 0:27

You're listening to white bird mutual aid. I'm Hana Francis. This show is funded by white bird clinic in Eugene, Oregon. We are a local nonprofit organization that provides many different kinds of social services to the communities in Lane County. And in this show, we explore what social services workers do and why it is so important. This episode was originally aired in spring of 2022. Acorn Community Cafe is a small restaurant and nonprofit that was started from the ground up by two folks who took it upon themselves to help address food insecurity. Their names are Miranda and Cory. This space is welcoming with beautiful plants chirping birds, and the sounds of the community bustling around us. Please excuse the somewhat crowded audio quality of the next episode. What are y'all painting?

Miranda: 1:24

that is our friend Sully who I have commissioned to paint a tiny mural in the front room of the cafe that will be access through a tiny door. In the wall. There's a little farm scene coming together for people to discover as a little surprise. Yeah, pretty exciting.

Hana Francis: 1:58

It's so sweet. So can you tell me a little bit about like how this came about?*Background noises* Just the noises of the industry huh?

Miranda: 2:08

It's true. Work is in progress. Yeah. My partner Cory and I were working at a restaurant together when COVID happened. And we were furloughed early on in 2020. And we're sitting at home and not working and still receiving unemployment money for not working for the first time in our lives, which felt super strange to have free time to consider what you're going to do with your day instead of having to wake up and go to work. And also money that we were considering extra because our expenses were down newer saying home so much of the time. So having extra time and extra money felt like we should be doing something with these things to help other people. And we were sitting on the couch. I'm sure Cory came across a headline that school lunch programs for being interrupted while schools were temporarily closed early on in COVID. And that the schools were kind of trying to figure out a plan for how to keep distributing these bagged lunches to kids, that were not physically attending school anymore. And that kind of hit home for Corey who had grown up kind of depending on the bag lunches in school and doing the rounds of food boxes with his family also. So we decided to use the little bit of extra time and extra cash to cook food for families and bring it out to a city park that was close to the elementary school and distribute the food there. We got in contact with the school and they recommended a park to us. And we just cooked the food and showed up the first week and no one came. So we learned some quick lessons about food distribution and how you need more than just cooking the food and showing up in a place you need to get the word out that you're going to be there you need to help people trust you to be a source of safe food and good food and make it worth their time to sometimes gather their whole family and walk across town to go and get this. So we kept trying we went every week every Saturday. And by the height of the summertime in 2020. There was a big line throughout the park. We were serving 100 lunches a week. It became a big deal, but also quickly outgrew the capacity of our very small kitchen and we this was sort of an an immediate fix for us. We didn't think about how long we were going to do this for it was just people need help right now. Let's go do it right now. And there wasn't a whole lot of foresight that went into it at the beginning. So around October we ran out of money. We weren't really collecting donations people would offer sometimes but we didn't have a donation solicitation strategy or anything. So ran out of money and had to go back to work and fall of that year. And so we really just didn't want Wanna stop? People were coming every week. And, you know, it was clear that hunger was not a COVID issue, hunger and food insecurity had existed in Lane County well before COVID. And we're going to continue growing with the state of things as they are. So we decided to take a month off and sort of reconsider how we could best make an impact and what niche we could fill in Eugene, and whether or not us continuing to make food and distributed for free would be worth it. Or if we should just go back to our jobs or join another nonprofit, or what should we do? decided to take some time off. And two weeks into that time off, I believe, I came across an ad on Craigslist for this building at 769 Monroe Street right next to Sweet Life. That was the vegan cafe who was closing and was wanting another plant based business to come in and fill their spot. And they were offering a free lease deal on the existing equipment to sort of incentivize another plant based business to come on in. And we reached out to them to see if they would be open to the idea of us opening a community cafe that we could continue serving the free lunches from well selling plant based food and drinks to make money for the free food. And they were open to it.

Hana Francis: 6:24

Acorn Community Cafe has since expanded on these services. And among other projects, they provide weekly meals to homes for good. Being vegan has been a really big part of their food philosophy. Cory expanded a little more on his reasons for providing plant based foods,

Corey: 6:44

there are plenty of ways to really honestly present these things. And they're delicious, and they're not making compromises. And you can get people excited about vegetables. So we kind of just piled on all of our goals all onto this one thing, but it was convenient also, because vegetables tend to be a lot cheaper. And I because I don't, you know, we didn't want to disguise vegetables anywhere on the menu, we always hope that it's inspiring people to look at their meal and think I can do that. You know, and maybe you won't yield the exact same results. But maybe it'll inspire people to just be like, Yeah, this doesn't have any meat or cheese or whatever. And I still loved it. And I could totally replicate this at home or something similar inspires me to make something else. So I wanted to help people feel inspired to make really cheap, really healthy meals with some of the best produce in the world. And, you know, there there's the environmental government benefits, the health benefits. There's just so many good reasons to do it and my ulterior motive of I'm vegan. And I want to I want to share that with people.

Miranda: 7:52

And we don't want to try and fix one problem in working against food insecurity by worsening another problem and environmental destruction or increasing the suffering of animals, we want to feel good about the aid we're giving in as many ways as we possibly can, is one pretty easy way for us that makes a big impact. And I was unsure what the reaction would be like from people receiving the free meals, whether people would be disappointed that there isn't meat or unwilling to try vegan food. But I've been really pleasantly surprised by the number of times we've heard, I can't find good fresh vegetables or fruit anywhere. I'm so glad to come here and get fresh salad or something with a fresh crunchy vegetable that clearly didn't come from a can it can be really hard to find. I think there's an over priority on protein, potentially. And it's easy to serve a large number of people if you're buying low quality food. So a lot of the food out there for freeze pretty low quality stuff, unfortunately, which is necessary in its own way sometimes, but I'm glad that we get to serve people vegetables, it's very fun and gratifying.

Corey: 9:03

Yeah, I think the aid that exists either won't include vegetables at all, or it's going to be from a canned or frozen and bagged. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But when you're cooking in huge batches, it's hard to make it exciting or fun to eat or like you know, you'll you like grimace through it and eat it because you know it's good for you. But yeah, I think that we usually do a really good job of achieving, like, these are definitely vegetables. They're definitely like, much better vegetables and I'm not grimacing while I'm eating and I'm like happy to eat these vegetables. Yeah, yeah, I grew up receiving a lot of food aid. It was like the free lunches at school, but also we were on food stamps. And occasionally we would go to the food bank. And it was like the one thing you're never going to see is fresh vegetables organic or not like that's not even part of the equation. There's no question. It's not going to be organic, but you're also just not going to see fresh vegetables. And what made it even harder was when we would buy fresh vegetables. My mom wasn't skilled at cooking. So what we would yield is something often that was worse than what just came out of the can. So the best vegetable experiences I had growing up were from a can. And I thought I didn't like so many vegetables, because you can only do so much when that's what you're doing, you know, so it's exciting. I love hearing, I'll try it, but I don't really like x. And then they eat it. And they're like, actually, that was really good. You know, there's nothing more gratifying for me, because I know that, that that was my experience as well, you know, I thought I didn't like a lot of vegetables, and then someone cooked them well for me. And I was like, Holy crap, I was so wrong, this is so good.

Hana Francis: 10:39

A large part of the motivation for making this place comes from personal and lived experience. I think many of us can relate to being food insecure at some point in our lives. But it's kind of common to try and avoid this truth because of the shame associated with it in our culture.

Miranda: 10:56

I think there's a lot of stigma that exists around accepting aid or going out and perceiving aid. Cory and I both that separate points in our lives, we're in a position of needing help, but didn't want to go and seek it out. Because it's shameful, it feels bad, it makes you feel bad sometimes for the rest of your day. And if you have to spend all day doing that, it's degrading, and that sticks with you. So I want every part of the Cafe to be welcoming, and to do our best to make people feel like this is something positive that they're doing for themselves that they can feel proud of, you should be proud of making the decision to take care of yourself. And we are genuinely happy to do this, I could have really used this at one point in my life. So I'm happy to get to do it for others. And I don't want them to feel bad about it, you know. So I think it's neat that we're, instead of cooking a really big batch of something and distributing 300 meals solid one event, once a month, we serve about 20 meals a day, and they're all made to order from scratch. And they're dropped off at your table by someone who looks you in the eyes and smiles and is genuinely happy to serve you. And the meal is fresh, and it nourishes your body, and you sit on the patio and you're like conversation and birds chirping. And it's a genuinely pleasant experience for a lot of people that I've seen, really turn their day around. So beyond just giving someone a meal, I think giving someone service and compassion and hospitality can mean a lot. And I'm great. We have a venue to do that. I'm grateful we have a venue to do that.

Corey: 12:43

and great. Yeah, it's something I've only recently realized for myself working in this space is funny because I worked at laughing planet for five years across the street. And it was nollie. back then. And occasionally people would ask me if I had been here, and I was like, at like a nice restaurant, like I don't, I genuinely wondered if they would like let me in the door. Because I was not used to nice things. And I didn't really know what barriers existed there. But there were all these invisible barriers that made me feel like I'm definitely not someone who's supposed to go there. So I just did it. And then when I got a job in fancy restaurants in Eugene, I started to realize more and more, it's just a restaurant, you can go here, you have to behave like anywhere else, right? Like, just don't do anything outlandish. And if you have the money to pay your bill, they don't care. And it's probably sounds really obvious from the outside. But that realization changed a lot of things for me of realizing that there are a lot of these invisible barriers that exist because of societal pressure or whatever I you know, I was a poor person. So I just felt like I wasn't supposed to do certain things that go certain places. And the more we give a kind of service that people aren't accustomed to, I feel that they'll start to question those own barriers for themselves. I can't guarantee that I can't know that for certain. But I know that when you show people what exists beyond their normal experience, they start to question what else? And why? You know, so I don't think that it's all internal factors that hold people back from doing things. But I do think that there is a lot of that we get tricked into believing we're not allowed to or can't do a lot of things. And I think starting the process of helping people realize that you don't need somebody's permission to go certain places. You don't need somebody's permission to go to school or change whatever you want to about yourself or your situation. I think that that's a huge factor that doesn't always get addressed because the aid that's provided is what people are used to. Not necessarily something nice or fancy or something that makes them feel special. It's just enough and that's what we're offering you So it's not the whole answer. But I like focusing on it right now because I recently realized it that I want to be part of that process of sort of questioning what those boundaries are, what are you really allowed to do? What are you really capable of also,

Miranda: 15:16

when I was no longer food insecure, I was working at restaurants and pretty immediately was, my perspective shifted to being told you shouldn't give people anything for free. Once you give people something for free, they'll come back to this restaurant, and we're not supposed to give them anything, just don't look them in the highest, don't tell them anything, shut them out, ignore them. And that is dehumanizing. Also to be told that you should ignore other people who are suffering, and it made me made me feel less human. And I didn't feel that I had enough resources to do anything to help because I wasn't wealthy, I had just enough to provide for myself, but the cafe accepts any donation no matter how small and turns that back into free food. So it does give people who have just a little an opportunity to give back, which can be humanizing in its own way. We have a lot of people who come in for free lunch for a whole week, and then they'll come back next week with a 50 cent donation. And they're so proud that they've decided to spend that 50 cents in that way. And it genuinely means so much to me that they would decide to spend their money that way no matter how much money it is, it's a big

Hana Francis: 16:22

So how does this organization stay on its feet, deal. the way I've been taught a restaurant, especially a new one, couldn't thrive if they just give food away for free. But this, as it turns out, is some really flawed thinking in several ways. Just because it's not highly profitable does not mean that the cafe isn't thriving.

Miranda: 16:45

So that we're actually running both in the same building, the way that ordering works, you come in the door, and there's someone there to greet you at a desk. And if you ask about free lunch, they'll say we have a blue plate special this week is chili and cornbread, for example. And there's also some prepaid tickets that are hung up on the wall there, you can either choose to order the blue plate special, or you can take down one of the prepaid tickets to the register and order your meal for patio dining or takeout. And that's it. We serve the meal

Corey: 17:16

logistically. You know, working in restaurants, you realize, you start to understand the standard markup margins and things like that. And you realize a lot of things can be made pretty cheap. A lot of it comes down to what kind of ingredients were using, which we already talked about vegetables are generally fairly cheap, with the exception of like mushrooms. And also like how how well you know how to handle it, you can ruin anything, right? So I felt that Miranda and I, under our guidance, our volunteers also could help us achieve a lot with very little because we could, as a restaurant, we can buy those things at wholesale prices. And we have the technique available to us to turn it into really good food without spending a ton of money. So each of those blue plate specials costs us about $1 to produce that's usually featuring primarily organic local produce. And always with a lot of thought given to the rounded out and nutritional value of it, you know, like carbs, protein, fiber, all the things that you would want to see in a standard meal. And we do have monthly donations on Patreon that help us pay for those we guarantee for every dollar we get on Patreon, we guarantee it will serve at least one meal. And yeah, we also give people the option to pay for their blue plate special. If it just sounds good, and you're willing to pay the $6 or whatever, then you can donate towards it. And that also goes back into making Blue Plate specials. So what it ends up costing us is time and energy and technique. But the cost is covered, we just don't make money on it. But generally we're breaking pretty much even sometimes the restaurant pays a little money towards it. But what's nice about this program is it kind of perpetuates itself. As long as we have the ability, like the people power to keep up production, that's really the only thing that would hold us back at this point.

Miranda: 19:15

Cafe provides the blue plate special donation base so you can pay nothing or you can pay as much as you want to help support someone else's free meal. And then neighbors will sometimes pay for weird things from the rest of the menu. So coffees or cookies or the biscuits and gravy are really popular. And those are the receipts that we hang up on the wall so when you come in the door you know that you always have one option and the blue plate special and ideally you have a bunch of other options that are paid for in advance to choose from to

Corey: 19:40

and it's important to us that it doesn't involve documentation or requirements or really any questions at all. It's just how many would you like? Is it for here is it to go so you're also not limited to one portion if you have a family to feed and you need five portions we do that.

Hana Francis: 19:56

It is important to have a place to get food where There are no requirements. at Acorn, all you need to do is ask, which is actually kind of a big thing to do in itself. Miranda spoke a little bit about why having minimal requirements is so important to her.

Miranda: 20:14

We try to keep them really to a minimum. And that's important to me. Because of my background, I grew up food insecure, and then was kicked out of the house at 18, and had no idea what to do and very much saw myself as a child who didn't know how to be an adult in the world alone. But as far as service requirements around me when I was considered an adult's and should have my stuff together. And I wasn't a parent with children, I wasn't enrolled at school, I wasn't staying at a shelter. So any of the aid opportunities that I seem to find were not available to me in my situation as a single, newly adult person with nothing to show for yourself. So we want to make options that are available to people like me. And that situation I was in where you can just walk in off the street and ask for what you need and get it without anyone trying to make you prove that you deserve what you need.

Corey: 21:11

Or wait for it, you can't get food stamps the day you realize you need them. And a lot of people, a phrase we stumbled upon together the other day was, a lot of people only have a little bit to give, but a lot of people only need a little bit of help. So a lot of those success stories of people coming back to tell us how they're doing now, they didn't even need food stamps, like by the time they would have been approved for them, they wouldn't have needed them anymore. But they didn't eat those meals for that one or two weeks, while they waited to like, you know, whatever was holding them back for those couple of weeks waiting on that first paycheck, or, you know, they fell behind on their rent or something like that. But to be able to get immediate help without any sort of bureaucratic process is a big part of what's special about what we do. That's our most targeted audience, you know, we don't restrict it, because that's counterintuitive to what we do. But we recognize that there's only so much a meal and a handful of groceries can do for you. But if you get it at the right time, it can be a huge deal. So we want to be available to those people as often as possible, because we want to catch those people in those moments where it's very dire. But short term,

Miranda: 22:13

sort of on that note to that person at the front counter, who will come to you when you walk into a corn Cafe is a volunteer Resource Navigator. So they're there to explain the way that the free meals work at ACORN that day, but also tell you about the free market that we're doing on Tuesday, where if you ask about something like d shelter, or clothing or how to get a bus pass or a phone, they have a resource guide actually published by white bird clinic that we flip through and refer them to other places that will be open at the time that they're available. Ideally, we can call down there first and make sure they're open and have what you need with that person is just there to help people and refer them to other places if we can't help them at ACORN right now, to sort of go back to your question about how it works, the blue plate specials provided by the cafe, but it's a program of the nonprofit so we're going to be looking for grant funding are ways to support that financially that are beyond just people paying extra so that we have enough funding going forward. We've also got an addition to the Blue Plate project, the free market project and the community partner project. The free market project is the market that we run on Tuesdays from noon to five that has free donated groceries available. There is a volunteer market host there to distribute free groceries, getting groceries donated by individuals who are picking up an extra bag at the grocery store, but also by businesses like Grizzlies brand donated a whole bunch of granola for us and hummingbird wholesale donates oats and sometimes chocolate and all kinds of fun things. Those are set up on a table at the cafe patio, and are distributed between noon and five. And that's another you just ask for what you need. We back it up and wait how much it is for our own records and then give it to you. You don't need to give a name or income requirements or anything.

Corey: 24:04

Yeah, so another thing that's cool about that is it's 100% donated. So, I mean, sometimes we fill in the gaps similarly, but that's donated by community members, but also the wholesalers like Miranda was saying, and I think that that's another cool way that people are able to contribute what they have, you know, we make it we try to make it easy to contribute what you have, whether it's your time, or you have a few extra groceries or you have some money you want to contribute, you can do that.

Miranda: 24:31

And from the distributors, a lot of these are rescued groceries also that term were saved from being disposed of entirely and people are really excited to receive them also their granola is delicious. They're very exciting products and ingredients that I'm very happy that we got to save from the trash.

Hana Francis: 24:48

It's important for the world to Sure,

Corey: 24:51

yeah. And we're looking forward to this summer, getting some of the leftover produce that wouldn't be sold at the farmers markets. That will be a thing that's hopefully coming soon. They helped us some of the farms would help us with the lunch people meals originally. And we're looking forward to working with them again. Because, yeah, I think it's pretty special that there is all of this food out there, right, we all know that there's food out there. And so most of it does get thrown away, or ideally composted or turned into animal food or something like that. But that's all extra steps of processing and more energy used, when the best scenario is feed the hungry people that it was grown for in the first place who just didn't get it. And that's a lot of what we do is we just end up being this conduit for all those things that just a wholesaler doesn't have a way to distribute these things in a meaningful capacity. A farm doesn't either, so they require somebody else's help. And we're that helping hand to just pass it along? I think that's pretty cool.

Hana Francis: 25:47

It's amazing. So could you all talk about how people can get involved? Like what what ways you can use volunteers?

Miranda: 25:56

It's a loaded question right now, because they just lost our volunteer coordinator. So my my hurdle right now is in volunteer coordination, not necessarily manpower. But when I've got a volunteer coordinator, and we are ready to accept new volunteers, there are two main positions that we use volunteers in the kitchen and off the market and at the resource navigation desk. So the kitchen volunteers are preparing large batch meals with direction from quarry that are either getting packaged for direct distribution out in the community, or they're being served as the blue plate special at the cafe. For donation base. There's the resource navigators who are at the front of the cafe. And they're greeting people while they come in and explaining the system for the free meal ordering and referring people to other services as needed, or helping them perceived service at the cafe. And then there are market volunteers who run the market on Tuesday. And when Saturday market is up and swinging, we're hoping to add a second day of the week also to involve some more volunteers at market and they're just bagging up groceries, weighing things, giving them out, talking to people. There are some plans for a community partner project to that will potentially have us distributing meals to places like the CSS shelter sites, I think would be really cool. So there'll be some food distribution shifts coming up in the near future also. Yeah, so realistically, right now, the the easiest way for people to help us is either by going online and signing up for like a$5 a month donation, every little bit is really helpful to us or coming by and picking up some fliers or some business cards that you can pass out to people, people are still learning that we're here for the first time all the time, one year. And so if you have a little stack of cards that says we have free meals from 10 to noon, Wednesday through Sunday, and do a free grocery pantry, you can hand those out. And we will probably see that person later that week. And I will be so happy that they found the food pantries moving outside and becoming a market. So we still have some I keep water bottles and snack bars and some small ready to eat ready to go stuff. At the front in case someone is really needing a little snack or some water. You know, that's important. But we do want to focus on the pot free meals, the blue plate specials during the hours left the cafes open. So we're just doing market one day a week while the cafes close so that we can dedicate our full time and attention to that. Like,

Hana Francis: 28:29

How do y'all do that? Like that's amazing. You spent all your time doing this stuff for other people.

Corey: 28:34

That is the answer. Yeah, the answer is in the question.

Miranda: 28:39

We both have worked a lot for our entire adult life. So I've worked two restaurant jobs back to back and been completely burnt out and unhappy just working for someone else's huge chain restaurant, you know. So it is a lot of work. But it's a huge labor of love for us right now. And I am glad that I get to do something I really, really care about even if I'm tired. And we're, you know, first year is coming to a close. That's always the hardest part is getting something going. So we have some some great help in place. And things are starting to get easier for us as people now too.

Corey: 29:15

Yeah. And we couldn't have done it without help. I mean, we've had help from, you know, people offering to cook us meals on our day off or financial help from people when we were broke, you know, and it's not like we did something impossible on our own. You know, again, I've kind of feel like we were the conduit for this. And we do work a lot of hours really hard. And I don't want to downplay that either, but we couldn't have done it without, you know, help from our community because we needed that to we still do we still regularly get help from our friends in lots of ways. And that's how we did it. Really.

Hana Francis: 29:53

That's all it takes. Taking care of each other. Yeah.

Miranda: 29:57

Do you feel like a lot of us sort of need Did the time off that the early pandemic gave us to reconsider where we're at and how we want to spend our time to, I don't think this would have happened for us, if we hadn't had that period of self reflection, either. It's very easy to get stuck in the routine of what you're doing, especially when it's kind of the grind.

Corey: 30:19

Yeah, one of our friends referred to it as overcoming inertia. Like you take that first step to doing what you want to do or making a change in your life. And I really feel like that first step is so hard. But once you do that, you've overcome inertia. Now the ball is rolling and gets easier, it doesn't mean it's easy, but it gets easier.

Miranda: 30:35

And most of us are not really trained to believe that we can make a difference, either we're trained to be quiet and go back to work. So it is a bit radical every time someone decides to spend their day off doing this with us, so I'm very grateful.

Hana Francis: 30:52

Yeah, absolutely.

Miranda: 30:55

Something that someone recently pointed out is that actions like this are more common amongst people who have been food insecure or hungry before, I don't think we would have made the decision to do this if we had both always been middle or upper class and had never experienced to discuss discomfort or fear or anxiety before. But I have felt the fear and anxiety of being hungry or not knowing where my groceries are going to come from, or if I can afford rent this month. And so fear and anxiety are not new to me, there's a huge amount of fear and anxiety that come with being suddenly a small business owner. But I think that because we've struggled in some ways we were more primed to struggle opening this place, it does seem a bit unfair that people who struggle are tasked with struggling more and making things better.

Corey: 31:48

But in Yeah, put in those terms, really, it made it feel like it was all worth something, you know, when you're used to struggling in a certain way, I was used to working 16 hour days, seven days a week, sometimes at the worst of it. And if all of that was just to make somebody else money, that's pretty depressing. But if it was all to train me to be prepared for doing this for myself, and somebody else in our own vision, it feels like it's worth a little more. That doesn't mean I I don't necessarily want to encourage people to do exactly what we did. But I think it was little steps. At first, we just decided we would do anything knowing that it might not take off knowing that it might not be anything. And it might have been a silly mistake, a silly way to spend a day making a big pot of chili and trying to hand it out, which it turned out to be kind of silly, nobody showed up, right. But nobody stopped us either. And that was the most powerful thing was realizing that no one is going to come along and ask you to do a thing that needs to be done. We all notice things that could be done all the time, whether it's like, you know, picking up some garbage that's in the street that all the cars have to drive around, that's a weird example. Or, you know, catching the last puppy or whatever, you know, there's, there's power in every time we interrupt our own patterns to go do a thing, because we're expecting somebody else to take care of it. Or that there would already be some industry in place, or it's already somebody else's job to do that. So if it's not already happening, that that means that it's impossible or just not going to happen. And I think taking the time to reflect on what you see problems, what problems you see in the world that you could do something small to address is the biggest step. Because taking that time to consider whether or not you have the power yourself without any outside assistance to do something. That's really the start of the process. If you take that moment to fix that same tax app, Puppy pick up that garbage, there becomes power. And each time you do that, and the more you if you take the time to plan on like, well, how can I expand this? How can I build it better? How can I do a better job? How can I be more efficient? How can I bring visibility to this issue? Every time you do a little bit? It's building something, whether you are consciously doing it or not. So yeah, it's hard to not, it's hard to not sound cheesy when you say like, I don't know how to do it, you know, like, look at a problem and fix it. But it can be that simple. Because it doesn't need to be a big organization or something you can be one person just doing things

Miranda: 34:17

more people are realizing that to Eugene bleeds is a fairly recent organization that has started up in Eugene providing free period products to people who need them. And they have partnered with the cafe to provide period products for free through the restroom here. And on their most recent drop off. They said we started up after we've read about lunch people and we were inspired that you guys just went out and did it and we thought hey, we can do this too. And their focus is totally different from ours, but it fills a niche that was not filled at all in Eugene before they started working. And I think that is so so very cool. I work the register every day. So I meet every single person that comes to the cafe and I've met a lot of people who share little stories of waste. They've made the world better. It inspires me. Yeah.

Corey: 35:02

And it's easy to feel powerless in the world that we live in where there are these huge institutions that sort of control a lot of our actions. And I don't think we're meant made to feel very powerful on our own very often. So hopelessness about the problems we see makes a lot of sense to me. And I feel like I've been very pessimistic my whole life and cynical. And the nice thing about being cynical is you're usually right. So you get to feel really good about yourself. But it's a cold comfort, being cynical all the time, because good things do happen. But they can only happen if people are working really hard for them. So if you want to be the smart person who gets to feel superior to everybody be cynical. But if you want to actually see good happen, if you believe that good can happen, then you got to do it, because there's no one better than you and me and her and Sally inside, you know, it's it's up to all of us.

Miranda: 35:57

I can't say it better than that.

Corey: 36:00

My therapist said that.

Hana Francis: 36:05

Acorn Community Cafe partners with a lot of local nonprofits and organizations to bring healthy and accessible food to folks.

Miranda: 36:14

We have had a lot of support from local businesses, actually, who have contributed to things like the bake sale or hosted benefits to raise money for the cafe. I've been really encouraged by the support that we've seen specifically from local restaurants and grocery stores. Which is cool because Cory and I came from the restaurant industry and are excited to see small business owners who also don't have a whole lot choosing to give their time or their energy or their staff to give back also. Who have we worked with nonprofit wise? Eugene bleeds. Yep. And HIV Alliance helps us with Naloxone that we have at the front, we have Narcan or Naloxone on hand for our resource navigators that we give out for free also, as long as we have it. And they provide safer sex kits for the restroom that are just soft surface tucked in there for free.

Corey: 37:13

Yeah, it's kind of silly, because we're so limited to this space that unless someone's interacting with us in this space, we kind of lose track of what other people are doing. So

Miranda: 37:24

we're at as a business were somewhat limited. Also, for example, food for Lane County will only partner with registered 501 C three nonprofit organizations. So while it would be great to have food for Lean county drop off canned goods for the pantry periodically, that is not an option for us as a business, no matter what we do with them. So we're getting there are limited in some ways. Yeah, we were also like two weeks from fire from from filing for a 501 C three status. So we are very close to being able to receive that kind of help. And those partnerships too. And then something new that we're doing is a community partner project with the nonprofit where we're going to be sharing free meals with other organizations in hopes of building those kinds of relationships with people who have similar missions. We're thinking if like, like this whole street aid, for example, wants to set up at a park and distribute herbal medicine, we can give them 50 free meals to distribute that day. Also, as long as the meals are going directly to hungry people who need them, we will cater that event for free. We'll do one a month, one a month 50 meals.

Corey: 38:30

Yeah. And then the the CSS sites, we have contacts with them. Just like while you guys are providing housing, you can provide food, we can provide food occasionally trying to pile on resort trying to like, you know, build a package deal.

Miranda: 38:44

Well, we don't officially have a partnership with them. I do refer people all the time to community supported shelters. And we've had several of our regulars who hadn't heard about them at all that ended up getting shelter at one of the CSS sites because they heard about it at the cafe. I am very grateful that we have somewhere that sort of an interim option between the street and an apartment to refer people to that has been successful for a number of the people that we see regularly.

Hana Francis: 39:09

Acorn Community Cafe can use your support, go to their website at the link in the description to donate order food online, or visit the cafe at 769. Monroe Street for a lovely experience.

Corey: 39:22

Yeah, I think it does. It sounds a little bit like a cash grab. But it really does come down to money right now is the most pivotal thing for us. Because whether it's funding more blue plate specials, because the need is always increasing or just funding for nonprofit that is fledgling and just sort of trying to flesh out those programs and give us the ability to say hire a volunteer coordinator so that we can expand all the other parts of the operations. That's the biggest thing. So whether it's Patreon, eating at the restaurant, going to the big sales, you know, there's lots of different ways but

Miranda: 39:56

I'm excited to see a nice busy year for year two at the Cafe. Also we have such a tiny staff that we haven't gotten to spend a lot on advertising, for example, so people are still finding out about us from word of mouth and word of mouth has been positive so far. So I'm hoping that people know we're here by now. And I would really love for people to come down to the cafe and experience it for themselves. I think that when a lot of people hear about the cafe and hear that we serve free meals, they assume that they should not come here. And that is not the case. We depend on you. Coming here also in sharing community with us.

Corey: 40:31

And you'll be glad you did I stake my reputation on it, you enjoy it.

Hana Francis: 40:36

For more information on acorn Community Cafe, check out the link below or visit acorn cafe.com. If you have any comments or questions, please reach out to me at White Bird mutual aid@gmail.com. Thank you for listening to white bird mutual aid. I'm Hana Francis. Amazing. Thank you all so much for your

Miranda: 40:59

time. Thanks for talking to us.