The Moment That Changed Everything

Denise Cerreta, an acupuncturist in Salt Lake City, used to run a café in the front of her clinic to make ends meet. One day in 2003, searching for a higher purpose in her life, she made a decision. "A huge energy came over me," she recalls. She had been thinking about "letting people price their own food," according to what they could pay. "The next person who walks through the door..." she told herself.


A decade later, the consequences of that decision, here in New Jersey and elsewhere, are astonishing.

The next person who walked through the door happened to be a woman, unremarkable, not visibly needy.

Cerreta invited her to "’Pay whatever you can.’ Her eyes got really big," Cerreta recalls. "And in that moment, I really felt my heart expand. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is it…this is what I am supposed to be doing.’”

That simple gesture germinated a movement–the One World Everybody Eats Foundation–that is slowly spreading across the country.

Cerreta turned her cafe into a nonprofit food service that encourages diners to pay a suggested price–more if they can, less if they can’t–or to pitch in as volunteers in exchange for a healthy, hot meal.

Now 51, Cerreta calls Santa Fe home, but she spends many days a year traveling to help others establish similar businesses. From Colorado to Texas to Washington, she has directly or indirectly launched 30 similar “community kitchens,” and is mentoring at least 50 others in the planning stages.

In 2009, Cerreta came to Highland Park to help establish A Better World Café.

The business is a partnership between two nonprofits, Elijah’s Promise–a group that runs a New Brunswick-based culinary arts training program–and the grassroots community service agency Who Is My Neighbor.

Rachel Weston,
40, a graduate of the Promise Culinary School, is chef/manager of A Better World. Cerreta calls her the on-site “passionate visionary” that every project needs to succeed.

Thanks to the work of three staffers and up to 50 volunteers a week, the café serves lunch Monday through Friday–“from 50 to 150 meals a day,” Weston says. if you can neither pay nor volunteer, there is always a dish of the day that is free.

Cerreta is about to return to the Garden State for the 4th annual One World Everybody Eats Summit, to be held in New Brunswick January 19th through 21st.

“It’s almost like a reunion,” she says. “It’s a time of networking, sharing ideas, and also an opportunity for groups that have community cafes to mentor those in the planning stage.”

If you’re interested, there’s a free download–“Spirit in Business: Our Guide to Starting a Community Café”–that shows “how businesses can become more spiritually based and sustainable by redefining what a profit means without sacrificing it,” Cerreta says.

A cookbook, Community Kitchens-Favorite Recipes is available for $15.

“We are facilitating and growing a network of people who share information and support each other,” Cerreta says. “I believe, if you follow your heart and follow your path, good things will keep happening.”

oneworldeverybodyeatsfoundation.org

betterworldcafe.org

elijahspromise.org

whoismyneighbor.net

 


SUZANNE ZIMMER LOWERY is a food writer, pastry chef and culinary instructor at a number of New Jersey cooking schools. Find out more about her at suzannelowery.com.

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