1.) SAME Café

SAME Café is the flagship program of SAME, Inc. and represents our physical storefronts. These restaurants serve healthy food to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. The original SAME Café is SAME Denver located on Colfax. Our second location, SAME Toledo, opened in the Toledo Lucas County Public Library in November 2022. Plans are in the works for a third location but this course enables you to open a SAME Café in your town. See the last section of this course, Roadmap to SAME Café Your Town, to learn how!

Pictured: Participation counter at SAME Denver

For a glimpse at what it's like to enter a SAME Café, watch the video below from SAME Denver.

2.) SAME Outreach

SAME Outreach began with a food truck and has since grown immensely. Our Outreach program helps us create community at the organizational level. Just like in the Café, the Outreach program uses a Participation Model for the catering events we do. SAME is willing to exchange Outreach services to mission-aligned organizations for what is within those organizations' budgets.

This branch of SAME encompasses any meal that is served outside the walls of the Café or our normal hours of operation. This includes but is not limited to:

• Catering—Check out our catering information here: https://www.samecafedenver.org/catering
• Food truck events
• Fundraising and awareness events
• Partnership events with mission-aligned organizations
• Farmers markets
• Meals dropped off to libraries (in the case of our SAME Cafés that are not already in a library)

Pictured: The SAME tent at the City Park Farmers Market in Denver

Pictured: Food set up at the City Park Farmers Market in Denver

3.) Cook to Work

Cook to Work is the job training program that is housed within SAME Cafés. This program seeks to bridge gaps in job experience/training and meaningful employment opportunities, especially for young adults in our community. As an entry-level job-readiness training program, students acquire industry-specific skills essential for employment in the restaurant sector, alongside transferable skills like customer service that broaden their prospects in a multitude of careers. This enhancement of skills can lead to economic independence and upward mobility.

The biggest goal of this program is to foster a resilient and engaged community, while simultaneously addressing the challenges of food insecurity and providing meaningful employment opportunities. Participants work to complete various modules that enhance their learning while also earning three meal tokens for each completed module. See downloadable examples of these training modules below.