A Place at the Table

A Place at the Table is Raleigh’s first pay-what-you-can cafe, a nonprofit where anyone can sit down to a hot meal regardless of means. Breakfast and lunch are both served all day. One in five children go hungry, and the cafe was built as a response to that.

Founder and executive director Maggie Kane built it around dignity and choice, so the experience looks and feels like any other cafe in town. As the team puts it, you would not know from the room that it is a nonprofit.

What to know

• More than 355,000 meals have been served to people in need since January 2018.
• Around 200,000 cups of coffee have been poured over that time.
• Over 2,000 individual volunteers work in the cafe each year.
• A give-a-meal program lets customers cover a meal for someone else.
• The cafe is licensed and follows the same health department rules as any restaurant.