MISSION: Tricklebee Cafe is pay-what-you-can community cafe centered on healthy meals, food service training, and spiritual nourishment.
VISION: Our menu is comprised of delicious, nutritious, local, mostly-plant-based food and drink. As part of the One World Everybody Eats (OWEE) network, we allow patrons to pay whatever they want or to volunteer in the café in exchange for a meal. We also offer opportunities for patrons to “pay it forward,” allowing those with less financial means to have their meal cost supplemented by the generosity of others. Our café also serves as a chapel-like space, allowing for daily sacred encounters with God and neighbor.
PHILOSOPHY: Tricklebee Cafe relies mainly on the seasonal harvests of local farmers, beekeepers, and gardeners to constitute its menu. We offer food to all, in the Sherman Park neighborhood (known as a food desert) where an abundance of highly-processed “food” is what’s convenient and affordable. We understand that God’s kin(g)dom is revealed when we give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty and welcome to the stranger (Matthew 25:35).
The Real Food Promoter is a Lutheran Volunteer Corps intern who is responsible for the efficient and effective ''real food'' promotion at Tricklebee Café. [By ''real food,'' we mean: locally-sourced, organic, non-GMO, from-the-earth, mostly-plant-based, fairly-purchased, affordably-priced.]
Responsibilities include:
-Working alongside the Executive Director to draft marketing and outreach materials (which includes updating our website, creating events on our facebook page, creating informational and event flyers, and creating and sending out our monthly e-newsletter.
-Volunteering in the cafe regularly(which includes working the “front of house” when our cafe is open: greeting guests, taking food orders, supervising volunteers, working in the kitchen: food prep, plating and serving food, bussing tables, doing dishes, clean-up, etc.), and really anything that needs doing in the cafe as needed: changing toilet paper and paper towel rolls, opening and closing the cafe, etc., alongside other staff, interns, and volunteers),
-Monthly bulk food ordering through United Natural Foods Inc. and Lapari Foods,
-volunteer coordinating,
-coordinating and co-hosting occasional Healthy Choices Workshops centered on real food education, in conjunction with local nutritionists, chefs, gardeners, artists, and other community partners,
-initiating and joining in Milwaukee food justice advocacy work, including regular participation in monthly Milwaukee Food Council gatherings and weekly Sherman Park Food Pantries, representing Tricklebee Café at community meetings hosted by local Business Improvement Districts and the Alderman, etc.,
-networking with local urban gardeners, farmers, and farmers’ markets to broaden Tricklebee Café’s web of food suppliers (which includes occasional visits to the farms to pick up produce),
-grant-writing (experience is a plus, but the best way to learn is by doing), and
-working alongside the Tricklebee Café gardening interns during the growing season to help plant, nourish, and harvest produce in our urban garden beds,
This position reports directly to the Executive Director, and will work closely with all staff and volunteers to ensure a just, resourceful and community-fostering café. [A quarterly typed report of progress and goals must be submitted to the Executive Director for review, which will be followed up by an in-person consultation.] It is also expected that some of this role’s work will intentionally overlap with fellow LVC Food Justice interns’ work at All Peoples Church, Cross Lutheran Church, & the Urban Ecology Center, ideally resulting in collaborative food justice efforts in the realms of advocacy, public policy, community organizing, and social service (both direct and indirect).