SAME Café Set to Expand Their Denver Store

The participation and donation-based restaurant adapted from the soup kitchen model will balloon into the building next door to enhance its thoughtful, community-driven mission
SAME Café set to Expand Their Denver Store
Photo: Official | SAME Café

SAME Café, located at 2023 E Colfax Ave, Denver, CO 80206, will take over one bay of the former Mulberries Cake Shop location at 2027 E. Colfax, according to a commercial construction permit filed with the city and confirmed by CEO Brad Reubendale. Reubendale told What Now Denver, that though SAME café hopes to complete the project sometime in August, a specific launch date is unknown due to pending permits and funding.

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SAME – which stands for “So All May Eat” – was created in 2006 by husband-and-wife Brad and Libby Birky. “After innumerable hours volunteering with soup kitchens and food pantries, Brad and Libby brainstormed the idea for SAME Café on a cocktail napkin and magazine page on a flight home from visiting family,” explains the company website

The café’s concept is as follows: “[Anyone] can be nourished with dignity while contributing what they can – time, money, or produce – to the operation of the Café.” SAME’s menu rotates daily and is expertly crafted by the cafe’s executive chef Carrie Shores who manages to utilize the eclectic and sometimes mismatched produce selections to everyone’s advantage.  

When Brad and Libby started SAME 16 years ago, they weren’t sure the concept would work given its unique and possibly misunderstood approach, but they decided “if just one person who needed food came in and got a warm meal, then all of the work would be worth it.” Today, they’ve received awards, national attention, spawned a food truck, and are in the process of opening a second location. 

What Now Denver quickly caught up with Reubendale to ask a few pertinent questions about the soon-to-be-enhanced establishment. Here’s what he had to say:

WND: What will the expansion include?

Reubendale: The expansion will include additional storage, a walk-in cooler and freezer, an additional prep area, an additional dishwashing area, and a produce check-in area for the large amounts of farm/garden produce we receive daily during the harvest season. We will expand the patio seating area, but mostly we are expanding prep areas and storage.

WND: Will the expansion alter SAME Café’s operations in any way?

We are very excited about this expansion because it will help SAME’s operations in three significant ways: 1) It will allow greater space for preparation which means we can have groups volunteering in ways that we cannot currently in our tiny kitchen, 2) It will allow us to greatly expand our outreach program (food truck and delivered meals) as it gives those teams the space to create the meals, then come back and clean up without disrupting the daily operations of the café, and 3) the walk-in coolers are amazing and will help the team deal with the thousands of pounds of produce we get donated every year.

Last year, we had 17,000 pounds of produce donated and we had to process and freeze it all in reach-in coolers located in the basement. The whole team is literally breathing a sigh of relief that after 16 years we are [expanding].

Amanda Peukert

Amanda Peukert

Amanda Peukert is a Los Angeles-based writer with a love for tattoos, music, food, and film. She received her BA and MFA in creative writing from California State University, Long Beach. Her work has appeared in/on SPIN, LA Taco, Tattoodo, Skin Deep, and Tattoo Energy. When she’s not writing, you can catch her listening to Alice in Chains and Tupac, or watching movies like The Crow and Halloween while eating tacos and drinking a cold beer.
Amanda Peukert

Amanda Peukert

Amanda Peukert is a Los Angeles-based writer with a love for tattoos, music, food, and film. She received her BA and MFA in creative writing from California State University, Long Beach. Her work has appeared in/on SPIN, LA Taco, Tattoodo, Skin Deep, and Tattoo Energy. When she’s not writing, you can catch her listening to Alice in Chains and Tupac, or watching movies like The Crow and Halloween while eating tacos and drinking a cold beer.

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