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Work begins on opening nonprofit cafe in Marietta

MARIETTA — The Manna Community Cafe will be a restaurant unlike any other in Marietta.

The brainchild of Harvest of Hope founder Karen Kumpf, the nonprofit cafe will offer a range of payment methods: Buy off the menu, pay what you can afford or eat in exchange for doing work in the cafe. Another option will be “pay it forward,” buying your own meal and one for the next person who needs to eat.

The Marietta cafe is still in the conceptual stage, Kumpf said recently. She has recruited six other people to serve on the board, and at a meeting scheduled for Wednesday they expect to review the organization’s first legal documents, its bylaws, and get started on registration as a 501(c)3 charity.

“That’s the big thing we need to do, and we’ll be working on that for the next several months,” Kumpf said. “Then we can start enticing people to donate, it will allow them that tax break.”

Kumpf said she is also working to expand the organization’s board of directors.

Much remains to be decided. The cafe doesn’t have a location, and its hours of operation are still to be determined, she said.

The underlying concept is that the operation will be supported in part by paying customers, but those who are hungry and broke can eat in exchange for doing some work at the cafe and picking up some job skills.

“There’s a lot you can learn, working in a cafe,” she said.

The only paid staff will be a manager and the chef, she said. All others will be volunteers — and the operation will need a lot of those.

“Other operations have advised us we should have around 200 volunteers lined up, depending on the days and hours we’re open,” she said.

The cafe will offer a menu that includes the option to order small or large plates, a way to cut down on food waste, she said.

Harley Noland joined the cafe board of directors after being invited by Kumpf. Noland brings expertise in architecture, volunteering and restaurant management — he ran the Levee House Cafe for 30 years and served four terms as a Marietta city council member.

A Marietta native, he left for college to get a degree in architecture and returned home after volunteering in the Peace Corps, an experience that allowed him to design buildings for governments overseas and learn about the core values of volunteering. Back in Marietta, he opened the Levee House and ran it for three decades. Noland now works as an architecture consultant.

Opening a restaurant, he said, is a complicated endeavor he’s seen from both the business and government side.

“There’s a lot of permitting, you need to submit plans before you build, and you have to be prepared for annual inspections once you’re open. You need equipment approval, drawings of the layout for the health department … without going through those steps, you won’t operate,” he said.

Noland said he’s enthusiastic about the idea of the community cafe, numerous models for which have succeeded across the country.

“It’s an opportunity for people to find training, to get work. There are certainly a lot of food service jobs here, and people can learn a trade or skill through this that would make them more employable,” he said. “Some of these skills take longer to learn than others, but washing dishes doesn’t take a lot of training.”

Noland said he expects that “a lot of mentoring will be going on” between cafe volunteers and those who decide to work for their meals.

“The people who work there will have to be patient and be teachers,” he said.

Anyone interested in more information about the cafe plan can contact Kumpf at 740-525-6417.

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