Colorado nonprofits step up after Littleton's GraceFull Café closure
A well-known café in Colorado that provided pay-what-you-can meals to people in need has closed, but local nonprofits are working together to continue feeding the community.
For more than eight years, GraceFull Community Café served residents facing food insecurity, including Samantha Pennington, who said the café's impact was immeasurable.
"GraceFull has definitely probably helped more than we even think," she said.
The café's owners announced online that financial difficulties led to its closure in February.
"Over the last two years, we have seen increasingly challenging times," they wrote. "Unfortunately, it has become too much for us to sustain this work in a healthy way."
Despite the closure, nonprofits such as Café 180 in Englewood have stepped in to provide meals.
"They reached out to us to cater 70 meals a day for a month because they wanted to fill a gap that they knew was going to be there, which I really admire," said Sarah Lesyinski of Café 180.
Café 180, a nonprofit restaurant that already offers hundreds of free meals weekly, has prepared dozens of meals in recent weeks, delivering them to Life Center Littleton -- about a 25-minute walk from GraceFull.
"We were so fortunate to have the Littleton Life Center and Café 180 come alongside us to ensure that during this transition, our guests had that ability to still get a meal," said Briana McCrumb with the GraceFull Foundation.
The GraceFull Foundation, which worked alongside the café to provide volunteers and funding, remains committed to its mission.
"The mission of the foundation is to create a stronger, healthier, more connected community within Littleton," McCrumb said.
Before closing, GraceFull Café provided more than 141,000 free meals. Now, the foundation is exploring ways to continue supporting those in need.
"The need is still very great," McCrumb said. "As a foundation, we are looking to understand, 'what is our new place in the community without having a café?'"
