Vancouver Island cafe provides pay-what-you-can meals to those in need

Ordering online from Red Cedar Cafe in Victoria, B.C., is much like ordering from any other restaurant doing delivery these days — customers select their choices, provide an address and then wait for their meals to arrive.

What sets Red Cedar's website apart, is that ordering dinner does not require a credit card.

When the pandemic first hit B.C. in April, the non-profit cafe, financed primarily by donations, opened to provide people who were financially compromised by COVID-19 with nutritious food on a pay-what-you-can basis.

What started with 150 weekly meals in the spring, has now ballooned to 2,500 and the volunteer-driven operation is  expanding to keep the growing numbers of hungry fed.

The cafe's original location is in a former bakery in downtown Victoria, but has since expanded to two new locations at city hotels: one at a Comfort Inn and Suites and the other at the recently closed Paul's Motor Inn on Douglas Street. 

Executive director Liz Maze estimates volunteers have delivered about 45,000 meals since the project began and that the recipient group is largely made up of seniors and the working poor.

Priority is given to low-income people, seniors, people with disabilities and people in self-isolation

"Red Cedar never sleeps," Maze told CBC Monday. "The holidays can be a really tough time for folks and we just want to ease that stress in any way we can."

By early 2021, Maze hopes to welcome Red Cafe diners into a physical space at the the Paul's Motor Inn location where they will be able to escape social isolation by eating out in a controlled environment that will have a health and safety plan in place.

"Our hope is to just open our doors for an affordable healthy nutritious meal," said Maze.

While Red Cedar has been made possible mostly by donors and community partners, Maze said the City of Victoria did give the enterprise a $10,000 grant this summer and the Capital Regional District has also contracted staff to provide meals to people living unhoused in the area.

Together, with six community organizations, the cafe makes about 1,000 meals a week that are delivered to people living in tents and parks.

Maze said the organization could always use more volunteers.

For information about volunteering with the Red Cedar Café or ordering meals, visit redcedarcafe.ca or call 778-817-0395.

"There has never been any pressure," said Maze about issues of payment, adding the website will not prompt people for any information beyond what they need and where they need it.

To hear Liz Maze speak about Red Cedar Cafe on CBC's On The Island, tap the media link below: