Local Impact Through Global Food: A Conversation with Sabine Langer

Sabine Langer will be the first to tell you she’s not a cook. But as the founder of Global Cafe in Memphis, Tennessee, she has helped create something much bigger than a restaurant.

In this episode of the Riveo Impact Lab, Sabine shares the story of how Global Cafe began as a desire to support immigrants and refugees and grew into a social enterprise serving authentic international cuisine, creating permanent employment opportunities, and building bridges across cultures.

From navigating the early days of entrepreneurship to pivoting during the Covid-19 pandemic, Sabine reflects on the grit, partnerships, and community support that made Global Cafe possible. She also shares powerful stories of employees buying homes, becoming U.S. citizens, and finding economic empowerment through meaningful work.

This conversation explores what it means to build a business with love at the center — one that feeds people, creates opportunity, breaks down barriers, and helps change hearts and minds along the way.

The Riveo Impact Lab is produced for you by Riveo Creative. For more Riveo Impact Lab content, including the video versions of all our episodes, please visit https://riveocreative.com/riveo-impact-lab/.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Riveo Impact Lab, the podcast in which we explore what it means for small businesses to have real impact in an evolving world. On this podcast, we engage our curiosity around topics like sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and the ethical outcomes of our decisions, all from a small business perspective. Hi, I’m Elin. And I’m Emily and we release episodes of the Riveo Impact Lab once a month on the second Thursday of every month so make sure to follow us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can support us by listening, sharing or leaving a review. Hi Sabine, it’s an honor to talk to you today. I’m excited for this conversation. Same, hi. Can we start out with you just telling us a bit about your story and your background and, what brought you to the US? Sure. I was born and raised in Switzerland. I moved, to sunny Southern California when I was 21. And as I mentioned, the sun brought me to the U.S. I, Switzerland is a beautiful country. But between October and March, you don't see much sun. And I'm one of those people that I don't do well without the sun. Like my family knows, if there's two days of gray weather here in Memphis, they better check on me. So that's kind of, why I ended up in the U.S., and I ended up falling in love with Southern California and stayed. And that was many years ago. Okay, so where are you exactly located now? So right now we are I am in Memphis, Tennessee, and I've been here for over ten years, probably 13 years now. Okay, how did you get from California to Tennessee? FedEx. My ex-husband works for FedEx, and FedEx is based out of Memphis. Yeah. Oh gotcha. Okay. Well that’s cool you get to experience very different parts of the country. Yes. Yeah. And I've also lived in Texas, where my daughter was born, so I've kind of gone, I keep going that way. Maybe one day I'll go the other way. Who knows? I love it, that’s great. Have you always, so you’ve got this really cool business now, and I’m wondering, like, have you always been kind of an entrepreneur or what made you want to go down that road? So I've always as far as I remember, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't know what, doing what. You know, and that's kind of a big, big deal. Knowing what to do. And when I realized that you could be an entrepreneur and helping other people, that's when it really clicked. And that's like, okay, that's my path. How did that happen? Was that like an “aha” moment or did that happen over, you know, time or do you remember when you were like, “Yes, I’m going to do this.” Yeah, absolutely. It actually kind of fell in my lap. It was the political situation in 2017 that was not very favorable for immigrants and refugees, and I just wanted to help and make a difference. And I just didn't know how. And I ended up doing a lot of volunteering and interviewing people in communities that have a lot of immigrant and refugees and myself being an immigrant, of course. I would find those women, and they happened to all be women that would cook on the side, you know, they'd have a full time job, one or 2 or 3 full time jobs, and then cook on the side a little bit, trying to make extra money to, you know, serve their neighbors, their communities. That's when I thought,“Hm, maybe there’s a path.” I remember having conversation, and one of them was like, “Well, one day I was hoping to open my restaurant. It's so out of reach now. I looked into a food truck, but even that's so expensive.” And a lot of them, you know, highly educated. My first chef had a philosophy and, psychology degree, but it didn't translate to the American system. So that was, she ended up having to, take a warehouse job, but, highly educated, but not a lot of business background. So that's when I came in and was able to kind of bridge that gap. They were doing the cooking, I was doing the business side. Oh that’s amazing. You know what I love about that story is that so many people complain about politics or you know, whatever is happening, and never take the next step to actually do something. That's true. That is so true. And I think that Memphis, I'm going to plug Memphis because sometimes it has a little bit of a bad rap on the national level, but I feel that it's the only and I mentioned, I think before I've lived in Switzerland, I've lived on and off in Italy, I've lived in California, I've been in Texas, and now in Memphis, I feel is the only place I've been where the ethos is, so that one little person like me can make a difference. And I've never really felt empowered or just had the capabilities of working the system or understanding the system to make a difference. So that's I'm not sure if Global Cafe would exist if I had been in a different city. That’s really interesting. I want to go into Global Cafe, but what is it about Memphis that made you say that? Like, what is so special about the ecosystem there? I think that everybody I always say Memphis is beautiful, it’s great. It has its issues, it’s super gritty, and that comes with the good and the bad. People know how to hustle. They know how to do what it takes to get there. And I think that's a I'm not saying other places don't have that. It's just really focused and very, you meet a lot of people like this here. You know, I think I’m drawn to cities like that too. Here in upstate New York there’s a lot of these cities where people are really gritty, and - And I mentioned my ex-husband, you know, I got divorced, and I could have lived anywhere. I could have left Memphis and decided to go back to Southern California. Back to Dallas. So I have a lot of wonderful friends, but just I just really love Memphis. Well that’s very cool, and partly probably because you started this really cool business Global Cafe. Can you talk about that and the mission behind the business side? Sure I can talk about it. I can maybe not shut up about it. So you might have to stop me. Please, please tell us all about it. So you might have to stop me. So Global Cafe is a social enterprise that I founded in 2018. We employ immigrants and refugees that, cook authentic world food from their countries, and we offer permanent employment, which is, a big difference from an incubator situation where, you know, a lot of great incubators, have situation like ours. But after two years, typically they roll out, their employees. So our employees, stay for as long or as little as they want. And that's, you know, really economically, making a difference in those people's life is really the goal of the company. And, seeing, you know, people being able to flourish and not just make a living wage, but truly making a difference in their lives and hopefully in their family and their larger communities lives. That was the goal from day one. That’s amazing. And yet, so here you are. You have some entrepreneurial spirit. You have this idea because you’ve been talking to people in the immigrant community, and you’re realizing people have skills and desires and not, maybe, the capital or the ability to turn it into reality. And you yourself don’t have any restaurant experience. Correct. So how did you, like, what was the process like? Did you just make up your mind to do this and find the space? or did you find the people first and then find the space, or how did that all unfold? Yeah, that's it's a bit of a wild story. So my life partner who's incredibly supportive is the one that put in my ear that I could do it. And it's looking back, I don't know if it's beginner's luck, if it's just naivete, if what it is. But I just went for it and never looked back. Never thought for half a second that I might not succeed. And just I'm also a very stubborn person. So, and I have a advanced degree in googling. That's another good trait. And I just, you know, I partner with a fantastic person who’s my general manager to this day who has very much the restaurant experience. He knows how to run a business. He's, he's cooked, he cooks, he makes beautiful drinks. His name is Juan. He's, as I said, my general manager. So I think that we formed such a fantastic partnership. And that was was really the magic happened. So was he with you from the beginning and did he help you choose the staff and such? He did. And here's the wild part. Juan and I met, many years ago, well before 2017, when I was doing my research. I, at the time was a very, prolific, long distance runner. And so he was and I had lived in Ventura, California, where he lived, and I was training for the Boston Marathon, and I needed to get a 20 mile run in. And the only person that could hang with me and chitchat with me on that 20 miler was Juan. And we stayed in touch through social media. And I remember seeing his Instagram page, and he'd always post beautiful pictures of food and drinks, and it was just all so gorgeous. And he's an immigrant. He's from Mexico and I, I reached out. This is just another wild story because I just reached out to him on Instagram.“Hey, I have this crazy idea” and we literally had met once on a 20 mile run, so we didn't even know each other that well. So I had that crazy idea.“Here's the idea, what do you think.” And he’s like, “Okay, I'll come and check it out.” So I flew him out for two days. That was over Christmas 2017. Did you already have the space at that point? No, no, it was just a wild ride. So he’s just coming out to see Memphis. So he is like, he comes, he checks it out, he's like, okay, I'm in. And this is how you work. And, you know, he's the one that hired the staff. It was kind of a concerted effort. But the thing is, I'm vegan, so I haven't, I haven't ever eaten probably 80 plus percent of what's on our menu. So the thing we did when we hired new chefs was asking them to come and cook dishes from their country for us, just not only to see if it was good food versus not great food, but also to see if you would, work with the American taste. Not that we would change anything because we really want to have authentic food, but we wanted to make sure, you know, maybe this dish, yeah, it would be a good seller, maybe this one a little less. So let's not add it to the menu. So that was all Juan's job. He had to try the food, because I could only try the vegan things. So that's, that's that's another part of the partnership that was really important. Amazing. And did you ever run into pushback? Like if you’re trying to get a, like a business license or something, and somebody might have said to you,“What are you doing? You don’t have any experience with this,” you know. No. Did you ever run into that or other challenges that made you second guess this whole idea? No. Again, I’m just stubborn, I just, you know, get out of my path. If I’m going to go between point A and B you better get off or join me in. But no, I think people were just super supportive. As far as the, you know, more administrative side of the business, we did not have any trouble. Yeah, it was kind of, all the stars aligned weirdly, but, it all worked out. That’s great. So you opened in ‘17 or 2018? 2018. 2018. So this is eight years later. Correct. Yeah. How has it changed or evolved since those early days? Yeah. It's, it's evolved a lot. In 2018, so we opened, Juan moved here in February of 2017, and we designed the space. We got it all ready, built it out. And we opened our doors in 2018. Initially it was just a pop up. So I forgot to mention, we are located in a former Sears distribution center. It was 1,000,000.5ft². Now it's a little bit over a million because they cut atriums to let light in. It's it's beautiful. So it's kind of like a they call it a vertical urban community. And we started as and I say we and that's a big old fat lie because I again don't cook I don't know anything. So it was literally our general manager and our first chef. They had a table in a hallway while our restaurant was finishing, the build up was being finished. And they were selling food for lunch out in the hallway just behind where our current location is. And again, I mean, it's just it just was meant to be because it all worked out. We would cook the food in a commercial kitchen, of an organization in the building, and then they would set up and just sell, lunch out of there. Then we moved into our space, and we got lucky because we were able to establish ourselves before the pandemic. Then the pandemic hit and that just, you know, major curveball. We went from not doing online ordering, not doing any delivery to every night changing. I remember I pulled an all nighter one, one night, moving our system so that people could place online orders because, you know, people are not allowed in restaurants. They could just come and grab and go. So that's something we we just had to implement overnight. And then there was a lot of, you know, uncertainty and the rules kind of changed daily. And sometimes they were contradicting each other. It's like jump on your left feet. Kidding. Jump on your right feet. Take two steps back. It was a little bit of that, but we were just working with it. But again, we got so much support throughout, that, you know, it worked out. I guess that should be my tagline. It worked out, it all worked out. When you’re on that mission that’s really true to your authentic self, I think it does work out. And just want to say it's a lot of hard work. It just didn’t all happen. You know, I just want to clarify that it was it has been it is a lot of work. Well everybody works really, really hard. But it's we've been really lucky. Yeah, when you first, you know, got the idea and you’re going to start this, how did you fund it? Did you have trouble getting funding? It was all self-funded. Yeah. I yeah. Because again, I didn't know what I was doing. Nobody would have lent me any money. I'm Swiss, so, I don't know if people are familiar with Swiss stereotypes. We run the trains on time, the clocks on time. And we're also super frugal. So that's that was another good thing. It didn't cost me a lot of money to start the business, but we were able to, self-fund. I didn't know any better. I didn't know that I could probably get funds from grants or I just I had no idea because, yes, I do have a business background, but I've never run my own business, and I certainly didn't know how the American system worked. So I just, again, beginner's luck. Yeah, well as you said it’s more than luck, it’s a lot of hard work and your vision and everything and that’s a big risk to put your own money into it. It is a big risk but again, I never thought it would not work, Right. You know, and at that very beginning, specifically the first few weeks before we actually opened a brick and mortar restaurant, it was just such a small group. It was basically my general manager, our first chef, myself, and then one of my kids and one of my first chef's kids. It was such a small, tight community, and we just had that mentality of whatever it takes. We will, if we have to sleep here and get it done, we'll get it done. If we have to start doing it all by ourselves, we will get it done. And that was, some days I miss those days. It was, i's kind of fun. Yeah that kind of gives me goosebumps. That’s like the true immigrant experience, right? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Do you, is there, maybe besides that story, is there any other story or moment that captures the essence of Global Cafe that you can think of? So I don't think I have one story, but I do have several stories and it's, it's the stories that just continue to drive me every day. I remember the first time, Ibti our first chef from Sudan, told me that she would be able to pay off her house. Granted it’s a small house. The Memphis real estate market is not quite like the rest of the country. Just to clarify things. But it was it was a huge step. Another employee, Maria, was able to, buy her first car ever. Another employee, Fayha, from Syria, Another employee, Fayha, from Syria, she was able to buy a house, and then we've had at least two, possibly three employees become U.S. citizens, including our general manager, Juan. And I was at that ceremony, and that's just pretty fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you really are making a difference for so many people. As someone who might want to visit the Global Cafe, is there a dish that everybody loves that you’d have to try if you came in? Yeah. Or a drink or something? So again, I haven't tried many, many, many of the dishes, but, one of the dish that is kind of the safe dish a lot of people, are attracted to initially and it's kind of like a gateway drug maybe. I don't know, how to say that. So it's a safe dish. That doesn't sound too crazy, doesn't seem too crazy. So people will try it, try it a few times and then they come back. They're like, oh, maybe I'm going to venture out. And that dish is a Mexican Asado bowl. It's healthy, it's delicious, and then, for people are a little more into adventure, the Dama with Rous, from Sudan, is really good. It's beef chunks and a spicy tomato sauce, that I hear, again, I have never tried it, but it's very popular. Oh that sounds really good. What’s your favorite dish on the menu? You know, it'd be telling you who my favorite child is, which I love you both kids. You know it again. It's funny. I love myself a good burrito. We have burritos on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but my employees love to laugh at me or with me. I don't know, I'm going to choose to I think that they laugh with me more than at me, but I'm like a burrito with no cheese, no sour cream, light on the rice and they’re just rolling their eyes at me and laughing. They're like, that's not how it's done. I said, I know, but I still want,“You don't want cheese?” No, but I yeah, I mean everything I again I'm vegan. So the advantage is that there's a lot of vegetarian vegan also, I’m not gluten free, but we have lots of gluten free options. There's just something for everybody. So I’m trying to imagine the restaurant and the like behind-the-scenes part of the restaurant, where you have all these employees from different countries and different cultures and I’m wondering what that’s like. You have a little United Nations going on in there. We do. We absolutely do. And we all learn from each other, which, you know, was part of our mission from day one. We have a big community table in the restaurant right behind me. Like, maybe you can see it right here. Which is part of getting that feeling of togetherness for our staff, but also for, customers. And we want to we want people to know about our customs, our food, our music, our way of doing. And, that translates also within our staff. So our general manager, Juan, knows many Arabic words. I use يلا يلا (yalla, yalla), to say“Hurry up, go,” a lot now. We just, we just all learn from each other and it's we do have the United Nations. It's really cool. That is really cool. And do you like, when you’re thinking about your music or what culture is featured, do you take turns day over day? No, so we, I mentioned the music and that's more like during prep time and after hours. During the day we are pretty intentional in the space not to have, we don't have any TVs. We usually don't have music. Sometimes we do when I need a little pep in my step. But we just are really trying to get people to communicate with each other, whether it's our staff or our customers. So one of my favorite times in the restaurant is when I'm, you know, I don't work in the restaurant as much. I work on the business rather than in the business, but I love being here. And when I bring food to the tables and you’ll see somebody saying to another customer, a customer telling another customer, “Ooh, what do you have there?” and they are starting to talk about,“Oh, I have this,” and “I love this” and “You should try this,” it's just pretty fantastic. Oh yeah, I think there’s really something about that, experiencing other cultures through food or music or dance or anything that you can just like get an understanding of. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We always say food is, and we say our first ingredient is love, but it's true that food and to an extension travel just breaks down barriers and fosters understanding. So that's what we’re all about. And doesn’t the world need that now. Yes, especially right now. We sure do. So can you talk a little bit about the community work you do through the Global Cafe? Yes. So as I mentioned Covid, I just get PTSD every time I say that word. But, during Covid, we, we moved into a higher gear and started, feeding thousands of medical professionals that, you know, were stuck in their hospitals, 24 seven for weeks at a time. So we brought food and, I mean, no offense to the cafeteria food in the hospitals, but I'm pretty sure was not great. And our food is great. So we would deliver thousands of meals, every week to medical professionals, different frontline workers. And then that shifted over post Covid to, weather related issues. So in Memphis, we don't do rain very well. But when there's two snowflakes and a lot of ice it basically shuts our city down for a week or two at a time. And every year it happens. So we cook hundreds of meals for, the unhoused. So we provide the meals to the organization that, put together emergency shelters during winters. Then we've also done, funding of clear backpacks for a local newcomer school. We've also, partially funded a DACA scholarship at a local university. It's just something that, we feel like we have to do. It's part of being a good neighbor. It sounds like such a special place you’ve created. Yeah, it's you know, and it was my initial idea. Juan was there from day one, but I cannot take the credit for all of it. People that work with us have bought in the the story, the mission, what we're all about. And it shows every day. I don't think that if you're not into that, that if you don't understand what we're about, you would enjoy, working here that much. So you really have to have a special person that understands what we're trying to do. And it seems like, if you're open to it it's an easy message to understand. It's spreading love and joy and understanding and earning and curiosity and all of those things. Absolutely, absolutely. And also, you know, trying to because the lack of understanding is just a fear, right? It's a fear based, reaction. And just seeing that I mean, this is going to sound basic, but right this second we do not have anybody that wears a hijab. For awhile, we had many of our chefs that wore hijabs, and just hijab not equal terrorist. I mean, that just sounds, you know, basic to you and I, but it's not always basic, because if you don't know, if you've never seen somebody wearing a hijab and you don't, you're fearful possibly. And you don't understand and you judge. And so just seeing those women that are giving their everything, cooking for you and that they love on you through their food, hopefully we shift your, your thinking a little bit. Yeah, I think that’s really really important and I’m so happy that you’re creating this opportunity for your employees but also for the public to take part in that. That's that's really cool. And you must, like, when you come in to the restaurant and you look around, you see all the cultures represented, and you see all these people who've had opportunities to work or to even experience these different cultures, you know, you must really feel great. Do you feel like satisfied or do you feel like there's more work you want to do? Like what’s, going through your mind in those moments? I don't think I'll ever be satisfied because there's always work to be done, but it's definitely what keeps me going every day. You know, seeing seeing people with a smile on their face, whether they are back of the house, front of the house, on the customer side, returning customers, people building friendship, customers with staff that they, you know, they know each other, know their families and all the grandkids and the grandparents and so on. That just means everything to me. And that's what just, you know, it's not all rainbows and unicorns, sadly. So, those are the moments that just keep me going. Have you thought at all about expansion or about like sharing this model so that other people can do it in other cities? Yeah. I just don't want to be in charge of it. But if there's ever anybody that's interested in copying the model, I'm absolutely, more than open and willing to help out. It's just, you know, it's a lot of work. It's really hard. And honestly, right now it's a little more difficult finding, immigrants and refugees with the current political situation. They just we don't resettle enough people that might be, potential cooks for us. So, you know, and, yeah, it's a little extra difficult right now. Hopefully we'll get back to a point where where, it'd be a little easier, but it also means that because it's a little more difficult is probably more needed. So if anybody out there is interested, I'm an open book and I'm happy to help. Yeah, I think that’s probably true that it is more needed and and it’s made me think of just another question that I’d like to ask you is like when you were designing the restaurant and the menu and everything are you like are you thinking “Well I need somebody from Latin America, I need somebody from South America I need somebody from Africa,” like are you trying to cultivate a menu that meets your criteria or are you building it based on the people that you’re meeting that you think would be a great fit? Yes and yes. So initially our first, very first chef was Ibdi from Sudan. I came to meet her. She was already cooking soups on the side in her community. And she was fantastic. Through her, I met another chef from Nepal, and then, so we had two chef and initially the model was three different stalls with women kind of running their own businesses. We changed that a little bit, but we still have more or less three different stalls, or three main cuisines. And at the time I was like, okay, which country does who should we support, who needs the most boost? And Syria was at the time still is, high on that list. So I started putting the word out, met with Fayha, which was our chef at the time, with her family. We talked and, she came and stayed with us through the pandemic, still in the middle of the pandemic. And then after that, same conversation. Okay, if somebody left, like, the first chef to leave was probably Indra from Nepal. Her family moved to Pennsylvania, so she was going with them. So I'm like, okay, what are we going to do? Venezuela was really high on the list, so we moved in Venezuela and so on. Right now, we have a Mexican cuisine and a Venezuelan cuisine, which is not ideal. I mean, the food is different, but ideally I would love having an Asian or, we have Sudan, so we have Africa, but another African country or something a little more out the box. But, we are now at the point of, you know, trying to find people that get the model, get what we're all about and that, can work with others. That's another because, you know, we are an open kitchen people share everything. So it's it can be a little tricky. It works fantastic. We have a really great group of people. But if right now I had a blank paper, I would try to get Asia, Africa, and, you know, maybe a Latin America or something like that. Yeah. So how many chefs are in the kitchen at one time? We usually have at least four So they each have their own section. So they, they share an oven and a stove top and fryers, but they each have their little stall. And then there's the main kitchen. The main kitchen that serves or the main stall serves a main cuisine. And then there are some secondary, dishes that are in honor of previous chefs. So in honor of, Chef Indra from Nepal, we have a Thukpa soup. We've had a general manager, Becky, whose family is from Kenya. So we have a Kuku Paka from Kenya. And so we, we have a Somali dish. We, we have different dishes from people that have worked with us before. That’s amazing. I can’t wait to come to your restaurant. Yeah. I can't wait to have you. So we like to ask all of our guests this question, and it’s about the word “impact.” When you think about this word, “impact,” what does that mean to you personally? To me, impact is measured in how many lives I was able or we were able to change. I want to see direct impact in people's lives. And that's what impact means to me. Really changing our employees’, not just our employees’ but our customers’ lives. And that's when I'll be happy and say, okay, we made an impact. We changed somebody's mind. We economically empowered somebody. We made a difference. That’s impact to me. I like that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for sharing your story. And thanks for having me. This has been incredible to speak with you. For anybody that wants to get in touch or support Global Cafe, where can they find you? So our website is globalcafememphis.com. We have social media, Instagram, Facebook and then I'm on LinkedIn as well if anybody wants to get in touch. Wonderful. Well Sabine, thank you again it’s been a pleasure speaking with you and Thank you. and I wish you all the luck with your restaurant. Thank you. And thanks for having me. Yeah absolutely. Thank you so much.