Little Grill Expands an H'burg Tradition
By SARAH CHAIN
HARRISONBURG, Va. -- An elderly man with graying hair read the paper and ate alone a few tables away from three sharply dressed businessmen. A young woman paying at the register was adorned with safety pins in both ears and a star tattoo between her shoulder blades. A young girl wandered from her mother’s side to investigate a plate next to the register that beckoned “Cookie Crumbs: Free Samples.” A disco ball hung from the ceiling.
Welcome to the Little Grill Collective, a North Main Street landmark that has undergone numerous incarnations since it opened in the 1940s. Most recently the restaurant has expanded on ideas that its owner, Ron Copeland, borrowed from Rainbow Gatherings, a nationwide organization that welcomes everyone from middle class suburbanites to ex-cons to runaways, according to Copeland. Hence, its current worker-owned status, its community orientation, and its soon to be expanded soup kitchen, which serves free lunches on Mondays to anyone who is hungry.
Copeland said that after a container labled Soup Kitchen was placed next to the register, customers responded so generously that the restaurant was able to explore the possibility of expanding the program. And by Thanksgiving, the Little Girl expected to move the soup kitchen into a building across the street that would hold 100 people, nearly double the number now served.
Once renovations are completed, Copeland said, the new digs will house not only the free lunch program soup but also a new organization called Our Community Place (OCP). OCP will offer “a hub of resources and information for everyone and anyone,” said Caitlin Anzalone, a long-time volunteer and a junior at James Madison University (JMU).
The growth is a far cry from the soup kitchen’s beginning after Copeland bought the Little Grill from his former boss in 1992.
“The first few weeks, I remember riding around in someone’s car, trying to talk people into coming,” he said. Back then, the soup kitchen relied primarily on word of mouth to promote growth.
The numbers served have stayed around 50 since the soup kitchen’s origin, but Copeland said that the last five years have been the most consistently busy. The emphasis on a cooperative rather than a charitable meal is intended to build mutual respect between people from different socioeconomic classes, which might otherwise be difficult to achieve. “Serving and eating together gets you off your high horse,” Copeland said.
“The biggest thing is you just feel love here,” said JMU senior Whitney Hegamyer. Like many volunteers, Hegamyer is a brother in Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed service fraternity whose JMU chapter volunteers across Harrisonburg.
Others participate on their own, inspired for religious reasons or because they agree with Copeland’s ideas. “The community feel, the people here – it’s Ron’s vision,” said Grace Shrock-Hurst, a sophomore at Eastern Mennonite University, in Harrisonburg. “People care about each other.”
On a Monday in October, all the tables were full and conversation and laughter abounded by 11:30 am. Everyone was free to serve themselves a mug of coffee, and lunch was to be served to each table family-style after Copeland announced the menu and asked for a moment of silence. After listing the items to be served, he added, “We got some hot sauce.”
“Hope you got four bottles of it!” shouted a man a few tables away.
“Charles will get it last,” joked Copeland, as the room erupted in laughter.
“There’s no separation between the kitchen and the outside room,” said Catherine Marafino, a junior at Bridgewater College.
“Everybody serves and everybody eats,” added Emily Wetig, a homemaker in her mid-twenties.
If everything goes according to Copeland's plan, that mentality will extend to services and activities with OCP. “It isn’t about food really,” Copeland said.
He added that OCP is “made available to the very poor, but it’s for everybody. It offers an alternative to the typical American mindset that your worth is associated with your access to capital. It’s not complicated. It’s just being nice.”