ROCHELLE — At the start of the new year, The Kitchen Table in Rochelle made changes to its operations, including scaling back its serving from two nights to one night per week.
The Kitchen Table is a donation and volunteer-based eatery/community pay-what-you-can café. It will now only serve on Thursdays from 4:30-6:30 p.m. The organization will also no longer offer delivery, except to those who are truly housebound. Pickup orders will still be offered. The Kitchen Table Founder Carolyn Brown said the changes were made due to a number of factors including a shortage of volunteers, rising prices of food, post-COVID-19 impacts, and a “drastic” decrease in donations.
Brown said she wants the changes to bring The Kitchen Table, a nonprofit, back to more financial stability and back in line with her original vision for it when it started seven years ago.
“Our number of meals we serve has increased since COVID-19,” Brown said. “We serve 130-150 meals and over half of those and sometimes three quarters of those are not paid for. We started delivery during COVID-19 when they shut the restaurants down. Ever since then, delivery has kind of exploded, which is a big struggle for us because sometimes we don't even have someone who's willing to deliver and we have to do it ourselves. We implemented a $5 delivery fee, but we don’t make people pay because it's not our structure. We have people order multiple meals and we pick up the expenses of delivery containers and gas money. When we started here, it was more about building community and giving people a place to come and sit down and make new friends and chat. We don't even use our Rowe Pavilion for extra seating other than for holiday meals. Because the majority of our meals are delivered or picked up. I don't feel like we're meeting our mission. It's a lot of work for us.”
Brown said The Kitchen Table recently cut out its payroll and work is now all done by volunteers, which it is currently seeing a shortage of. A small core group of regular volunteers handles most of the cooking and serving work, some of whom are doing 3-4 jobs at once on serving nights, Brown said.If you would like to volunteer at The Kitchen Table, email kitchentablerochelle@gmail.com.
Brown said an abundance and variety of volunteers is on her wish list for 2024 to bring the nonprofit back to its original vision. Amid tougher times, the organization still sees support locally. It recently saw a $5,000 donation from Love’s Travel Plaza from the $10,000 it got from the sale of a $1 million lottery ticket. She hopes the changes made in the new year will fix the recent issues seen.
“As a community, we can pull it back together,” Brown said. “It is truly a restaurant for one and all alike. The main difference between us and others is that we offer for people to pay what they can afford, pay it forward for others if they can or volunteer in an effort to pay for their meals. We are beneficial for our community and we do help bridge that gap for many of them. It just seems to get tighter and tighter as we go.”
The Kitchen Table joined a food bank around two years ago to help offset the cost of goods and add payroll to get more people to work, but that didn’t pan out due to a drop in donations, Brown said. The idea of buying and serving pre-made frozen products was considered, but was decided against due to The Kitchen Table’s mission of serving homemade meals to those in the community.
Brown said The Kitchen Table has food stocked up to get it through the next few months while it rebuilds its savings and assesses the community’s response to the new model.
“I've noticed a change in the attitudes of some people that may be abusing what we do here,” Brown said. “And it's not many people. We serve so many people here that pay what they can or are trying their best to get by. Sometimes it's like the actions of the few can ruin things for those that this place was meant to serve.”
Brown recalled a time when The Kitchen Table served 80-90 people per night years ago, far less than the 130-150 it now serves per night. And yet the extra seating at the space has not had to be utilized due to increases in those requesting delivery.
“We're going to try to reel it back in and make it happen and make it what it was supposed to be,” Brown said. “We used to have people lined up waiting for tables. Which was why when Mike Rowe came and asked what we needed, I said extra seating space. He donated the pavilion and we have hardly used it since COVID-19. I love seeing this place full. It was so nice. You look back at the pictures and say, 'That's how it was supposed to be.'”
For upcoming menus and information on ordering online, volunteering and how to make a donation, visit www.kitchentablerochelle.org.
