ROCHELLE – Rochelle’s pay-what-you-can style restaurant, The Kitchen Table, was recently named the community café of the year.
The Kitchen Table of Rochelle was part of a national online competition between 35 other pay-what-you-can cafes. The competition was put on by One World Everybody Eats, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing food security and building community through a pay what you can style restaurant model.
For the competition, cafes throughout the country signed up online and then people would go to the website, choose the café they wanted to vote for out of the list of 36, and then submit their vote. People were able to vote once oer day and the winner chosen at the end was determined based on the number of votes received through the website.

“This award means to me that the community totally supports us because we can’t do any of this without our community,” said Carolyn Brown, founder of The Kitchen Table. “All I did was provide the foundation and everyone else has made it what it is today.”
For winning the competition The Kitchen Table received a plaque to hang up as well as the recognition of winning the first ever Community Café of the Year competition.
The next step for the Kitchen Table is to continue serving the community as best they can and they encourage anyone who has not stopped in to do so sometime.
“We encourage anyone who has not given us a try to come out and give us a try, maybe come volunteer with us to help us continue to move onward and upward or just come out and dine with us to support us that way,” added Brown. “There are lots of opportunities here to pay it forward and help others.”
For more information on The Kitchen Table such as how to volunteer and when they will be serving meals, visit their website at www.kitchentablerochelle.org.