Cathy's Pantry & The Business of Giving
Written by: Reneé Blanchard
When I opened Church Alley Cafe & Grocery in 2013, my mom had just passed away from her second stroke, and I was in a deep spiral of confusion and sadness. I opened the cafe because my experience in food service had always brought me into community with others when I felt lost. Foodservice is my safe place. It’s where I feel most myself, besides when writing. My mom had instilled in me that we are lucky, which means we must give as much as we possibly can all that we can. I opened Church Alley with the clear intention of being a mission-driven community-focused small business. We would give and receive in equal measure.
Our first day open was a fundraiser for Louisana Bucket Brigade, an environmental public health organization started by a fellow Lafayette native and friend Anne Rolfes. We have done one to two fundraisers each subsequent year with a coalition of other small businesses. Raising money and awareness for the most vulnerable amongst us is as big a part of the brand as our food menu.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, my business, like so many, shut down, and I spent the remaining money in my bank accounts, keeping my employees afloat until we eventually reopened. City restrictions and on advice from public health experts, we kept our very small dining room closed for most of the year. We reopened as a delivery service for our bulked-up products remade for the home pantry and other small businesses that were also doing whatever they could to stay in business.
It was during these summer months of 2020 that community fridges began popping up all around the city of New Orleans. Hunger and poverty are as coded into the DNA of New Orleans as jazz and jasmine. My neighborhood, Central City, has been the poorest zip code in the nation for years, with a string of elected officials and neighborhood leaders sentenced to prison for embezzlement. We lost many elders on my street that summer, and those who had created hustles to stay housed and clothes over the years, lost the little income on which they depended. The hospitality and arts industry was decimated.
I launched Cathy’s Pantry during this time. Named after my mom. Church Alley quickly became a place where customers could make monetary donations, and we would make and deliver meals to neighboring community fridges. We also donated all leftover food. A local organization asked us to be a drop-off spot for period products for incoming girls at a local high school at the start of the Fall semester. We received an incredible amount of donations for this effort. This was when we decided to add period products to our monthly community fridge donations. We call it “That Time of The Month” in our advertising campaign. Eventually, the donations slowed as people went back to work and businesses reopened. Cathay’s Pantry looks different now. We accept donations daily but only make deliveries during the last weekend of each month. We accept period products, diapers, food, and monetary donations to make meals.
South Louisiana is particularly hard-wired to come together in difficult moments. It’s just part of what it means to live in this area. Watching a community, I had built around my small business show up month after month to donate has been incredibly moving. It is the exact reason I created my business.
Each month I take monetary donations and make purchases at a grocery store. I spend a weekend day making and packaging meals, then delivering them to the community fridge in my neighborhood. This fridge is located next to a community garden where fresh vegetables are also donated. It is located on Jackson Avenue, where Zulu rolls, Mardi Gras Indians roam on St Joseph’s night, and Second Line dancers show off their footwork. It is a magical spot where a community surviving and thriving in the hardest circumstances has existed long before I was born. It is a true gift to be able to do this one small thing in return for witnessing the depth of this culture.
The experience of opening a community-focused shop where profits are immediately given back to the community has shown me how great the need in my own community is. It has made me question where I spend my energy and gifts and find new ways of giving when money isn’t abundant. Cathy’s Pantry shows me each month how small my contributions are given the need. It has also shown me how much customers are willing to give when engaged. People give when they feel appreciated, empowered, and can trust the source who is asking.
I love making meals for Cathy’s Pantry. I like thinking through what people may want depending on the time of year. For instance, I am now purchasing more bottled water and fruits with high water content. As the heat and humidity ramp up, I put bottles of water in the freezer so folks can cool down faster. I make lighter meals like cold sandwiches in the summertime and heavier meals like pasta in the wintertime. I also like to give small snacks that people will eat. Often you will see incredibly healthy meals and raw vegetables in the fridges, but they aren’t taken as quickly as meals that contain more fat. I take this into consideration when I make purchases for Cathy’s Pantry. I think this is also important to understand when giving to communities that are not like our own. What are people actually going to eat? What nutrients do we need depending on the season and weather?
As I continue my studies, run my business, and find myself in middle age, I am contemplating how to make the most of the life I have been given more often. Cathy’s Pantry has been a spotlight on a possible path forward and is part of the question I sought to answer by opening Church Alley. How can small businesses contribute to the health and well-being of communities? Not just in providing jobs, which is important, not just in lifting the economy, but in creating more sustainable communities in times of great crisis. Crisis like the aftermath of hurricanes and oil disasters, in the face of the uncertainty of escalating climate change, and to provide a larger safety net to those needing a little help. Small and large businesses alike can not just be for profit. They must be founded on the idea of creating a community where its customers are happy, healthy, and financially stable.
Business can not just be about extraction at any cost. My work in non-profits has shown me that our communities can not depend on the kindness of others. Both government and large businesses will exploit this kindness by refusing to take responsibility for their part in the social contract of our democracy. And non-profits themselves never seem to be able to solve the problems they keep saying they are working to end, no matter how much money they are given to do so. We have witnessed the strongest stock market, the largest corporate profits, and the most stable of economies in our country’s history, yet so many are still unhoused and hungry. We need stronger safety nets built into our communities. While I think contributions like Cathy’s Pantry are important, I see it as one piece of the puzzle to create immediate help as we search for better ways to lift all community members. Seeing how little I can help with the meals I make and deliver once a month, I am reminded of this larger opportunity to think bigger.
I would love to grow Cathy’s Pantry into a larger operation with more resources. The next step I see is to obtain a grant to purchase more food and to support a community garden where a share of what is grown is donated. I would also like to find ways to include more people to make meals and have this be a monthly community event. I also think it is short-sighted to see donating our time and money as a selfless opportunity. Giving to others provides something we need for ourselves. Mental health experts often explain that when one is suffering, there is a lot of relief one can experience by giving to others. I would like to create more opportunities with Cathy’s Pantry to feel the relief and joy in giving to others.
