Weekly Dose of Community with Fox & Crow Cafe
Welcome to your Weekly Dose of Community!
We're back with your Weekly Dose of Community! Across the Cape, our friends and neighbors are working to provide resources, support, and positivity to our community in a time when we need it most. From individuals to organizations to small local businesses, Cape Codders have been creative and adaptable in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching out to their neighbors in entirely new ways to lend a hand.
While we may be apart from one another in this moment, our community has shown that we are resilient. And most importantly - we are all in this together!
This week, we're spotlighting the team at Fox & Crow Cafe in Wellfleet. Bruce Bierhans spoke with us about their Free Meals Programs and the incredible show of support from the community. Read below!
Can you share a basic overview of the program or support you’ve set up in the wake of the COVID-19 public health crisis? What were your goals in initiating this program?
On March 14, I texted a dear friend and client, Trudy Vermehren, the owner of Fox and Crow Cafe in Wellfleet. I was concerned about local working families and layoffs, and their ability to feed their families as this COVID-19 crisis progressed. By Sunday morning, Trudy and I developed a free Student Meals Program and by Sunday night we had raised $11k through a Facebook funding post. Wellfleet is an amazing small community that always comes through to help those in need.
On Tuesday, March 17 we served our first home cooked breakfasts and immediately realized that this program needed to be expanded to all families and seniors, and that we’d need to deliver to those that were ill or self quarantined. We had many folks that volunteered and by Wednesday, after one day, we expanded the program to a Free Meals Program to all those in need. It was a "Grab and Go" program, observing safe distancing, with "Ring and Run" deliveries.
We found we were serving over 50 meals a day, so on March 24, we established a new non profit organization called "Common Table" to be run out of Fox and Crow. We have a Facebook page and have already raised over $23k…in 10 days! We’re now serving more that 50 meals every day.
What sort of response are you seeing? How has the community responded?
We’re receiving donations of food from farmers, food pantries and fisherman and are serving the entire Outer Cape. The response has been amazing. We now have a core of 6 volunteers working Monday through Saturday with many delivery volunteers. Our corporate purpose is broad so that we’ll be able to assess and meet the needs of the community.
With innovation, dedication and creativity, we can help our communities, friends and neighbors. That is how we get through this!
