Amid the current coronavirus situation, local pay-what-you-can café The Kitchen Table continues to serve those in need within its community. 

While all restaurants including The Kitchen Table were forced to close their dining rooms, The Kitchen Table, located west of Rochelle at 7034 S. Klondike Road, continues to serve roughly 70-to-80 people per night, three days a week. The Kitchen Table is offering pick-up and local delivery service on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as drive-thru service for take-and-bake meals on Fridays from 2-5 p.m.

Carry-out and delivery meals can be ordered and paid for by phone at 815-561-9074, or online through its Facebook page and website at www.kitchentablerochelle.org. For take and-bake meals, families drive up and are served one or two pans of food based on the size of the family. 

Each pan of food serves four to six people and is served with salad and dinner rolls as sides. While adjusting to the changes was challenging at first, everything is now running smooth and safe for everybody involved. 

“The families drive up, we load it in their car and send them on their way,” said Carolyn Brown, founder of The Kitchen Table. “It enforces social distancing for both us and them and the delivery helps a lot of people who shouldn’t be out of their homes.” 

Another precaution taken at The Kitchen Table is only having five employees working at a time, to ensure proper distance between workers.

The Kitchen Table is also finishing up a dining room expansion project that it hopes to utilize soon after dining rooms reopen. 

The outside of the building is almost done, an electrician recently installed the lights and a quote to get the floors done was expected this week, according to Brown. Once the building is finished, The Kitchen Table will be able to utilize it to continue following social distancing guidelines in the future. 

“Hopefully when everybody reopens, we should be able to utilize that space for additional seating,” said Brown. “People aren’t going to want to be close together and that could be a concern for a long time to come. So, I would like to get that building open to be able to enforce a 6-foot distance between people.” 

During these tough times of adapting to changes, The Kitchen Table cannot thank the community enough for its continued support through this process. Without the support from the community and volunteers, none of this could be provided for the people who need it. 

“We appreciate everybody’s support through this, we have received quite a few donations which have been a huge help,” said Brown. “We just hope that everybody is remaining safe and health and will continue to do so.”