By Rosemary Gonzalez
Big Big Table Community Cafe, 272 Hudson St., will feed everybody and anybody who comes to the West Side.
“Everybody eats. Everybody gives. Everybody matters,” Mandy Bailey, founder of Big Big Table, said.
Bailey’s love for food and a lunch date with a friend inspired the start of the business. Her friend showed her an article she found on the Internet about the concept of a community café.
Big Big Table will be the first non-profit community café in Buffalo. The cafe was expected to open in 2020, but due to COVID-19 its new opening date will probably be in Spring 2021. Big Big Table’s mission is to respond to hunger in the community. The café will provide affordable meals with pay-as-you-can pricing.
“You can walk in and could pay a quarter,” Stephanie Smith, Big Big Table’s board president, said.
As board president, Smith leads the board of volunteers in business plan goals, fundraising, insurance, and legal matters for the café.
“We together can make this dream of Mandy’s a reality,” Smith said.
Bailey, the former French teacher, taught and constantly talked about food. After one year of teaching she decided to venture on her passion.
Encouraged by one of her friends, Bailey moved 1,000 miles north to work in a food company in Buffalo.
“While working there, I saw a lot of food being thrown away, and a lot of people, even employees being refused food. This broke my heart. I quit and started to think about what I am actually supposed to be doing with my life,” Bailey said.
After her experience working in the food company and doing research Bailey came across the One World Everybody Eats organization and its founder, Denise Cerreta. Cerreta is the woman who introduced the idea of a community café.
“This awesome lady started the first one of these running a little café on her own,” Bailey said. “She and I started talking via email and phone, starting to figure out what could happen in Buffalo.”
Bailey, who has a bunch of songs on her Spotify playlist especially about food, said the café’s name Big Big Table was inspired by a Christian rock song called Big House by Audio Adrenaline.
“I was hanging out with some friends and we were brainstorming sitting on Elmwood on the sidewalk and eating frozen yogurt when the song came to mind,” Bailey said.
Smith said Big Big Table is different from other cafes.
“We always wanted to have a literal big-big table so the café will have big tables,” Smith said. “You can be sitting next to your neighbor or someone you never met, and you have no idea how much someone pays for their meal, you just know that you are all there sharing the same dining experience.”
The Big Big Table team hopes the café will unite people of different backgrounds and promote inclusion.
“Hey, if these people have money and these people don't have money that means that these people and those people can never be friends, but why?” Bailey said. “We can create a different world where everybody gets together.”
As stated on the website, community cafés like Big Big Table are supported by donors and volunteers.
“We believe in a culture of contribution,” Bailey said, “where everybody has something or some way to contribute.”
