Leola Daul - Community Spotlight
- 13 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Food is a language of love, a symbol of togetherness and, for Leola Daul, the foundation of how she and her team take care of our community. When I walked into the basement kitchen of First Presbyterian Church, the base for Heart-n-Soul Community Cafe, the first thing I saw was the chef teaching volunteers how to roll burritos. They were having so much fun and putting in so much care into making sure that every one of them were rolled beautifully. You can tell that they were taking pride in what they were doing.
This initiative started somewhere around 2016, when Leola found herself reading a magazine article about a woman who had opened a community cafe in Utah, where everyone pays what they can afford for a healthy, nutritious meal. For some, this may sound like a wonderful, but infeasible idea - what with the pressure to balance finances and impact - but for Leola, it was the best way to balance our community’s needs and desire to help. She knew then, just as she knows now, that sharing a meal and connecting with your community is the pathway to personal well-being and a stronger community.
She began forming and sharing her plan to start a community cafe of her own and, while many people were supportive, few committed to involvement, which made it difficult to go all in at first, but a friend was able to convince her to at least give it a try, so she did. She signed up for a beginning entrepreneurship class where she was given a deadline to get everything started, which led her to attend a Chef’s Association meeting to look for a chef and underutilized kitchens. It was at this meeting, where she met Tracy Walvatne, who just so happened to have a kitchen in Josie’s Corner Cafe that Leola could use on Sundays, thus began the Heart-n-Soul Community Cafe.
In the beginning, there were some challenges to overcome that were a bit discouraging. She was working full-time and everything was run on donations and through the use of volunteers - but for every roadblock that was put up, a new path forward would emerge. Through community partnerships with local farmers, such as Noreen Thomas and Bill Erbes, The Kitchen Coalition Program through Great Plains Food Bank, other nonprofits, local businesses and the many, many community members that volunteered, she's been able to pull through the initial difficult obstacles, and rise to the challenge of those presented during the pandemic.
Like it did for so many, everything changed in 2020. People could no longer safely convene and many community resources had to pivot to continue to meet the needs of the people they serve. For Heart-n-Soul Community Cafe, that looked like delivering bagged lunches, to the tune of 500 lunches per weekend made by 8 volunteers - complete with caring notes encouraging people to hang in there, we’re in this together.
Understanding that transportation is a huge barrier to food access, Leola wanted to continue bringing the food where the people are, while also ensuring safe access, so she pursued a food truck. It was kind of pricey and she had no idea how to set one up, but that didn’t stop the process. A kind, anonymous donor helped pay for the food truck and the previous owner, who strongly believes in their mission, helped her learn how to set it up over the course of a year. On June 12, 2021 the food truck made its debut at First Lutheran Church.
Leola and her team are firm believers that everyone should have access to nourishing, diverse meals. With that they source the vast majority of their food from local businesses, farmers and gardeners to create their dishes. Their menu is developed based on the season, ingredient availability and through welcoming guest chefs who bring with them their own expertise and recipes. Best of all, they welcome everybody - no questions asked. If you can pay, that’s great. If you can’t, that’s understandable, so long as you're fed, that’s what matters. However, if someone is worried about not being able to pay, their team is always grateful for help around the food truck.
For Leola and her team, the work they put in to ensure that their Community Cafe continues on, is well worth seeing their community come together and the opportunity to ensure our neighbors are being nourished. Through their efforts, they get to learn about and try new foods, and share what they learn with everyone who comes along.
The Heart-n-Soul Community Cafe truly is a community run initiative. If you’re interested in contributing to their mission, you can do so by:
Providing Donations
Volunteering
Becoming a Guest Chef - there is no need for formal training, just a love for cooking and a want to feed our neighbors
Becoming a Sponsor - they give back to businesses that sponsor by putting their logo on their food truck
Attending any of their 3 fundraisers held annually
Spreading the word
And, of course, coming to share a meal - be sure to bring a friend!
You can find more information on their website heartnsoulcafe.com and by following them on Facebook.
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