TABLE of Carrboro expands to larger space downtown

Earlier this month, TABLE, a nonprofit that provides food for over 1,100 children in Carrboro, celebrated its relocation to a larger space downtown.

The grand opening at 311 E. Main Street featured a ribbon cutting ceremony and guest speakers including Carrboro Mayor Barbara Foushee, The Chamber For a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro President and CEO Aaron Nelson and TABLE Executive Director Ashton Tippins. 

Tippins said the old space was lacking in assets, as it was under 2,000 square feet, did not have a kitchen or a walk-in refrigerator and only had an undersized front and back door for pallets to be delivered through. She said there was not even enough room for people to have their own desks.

Now, she said, TABLE’s new space has a 12-by-16 feet walk-in refrigerator, a loading dock, a kitchen, conference rooms and newly renovated bathrooms.

“The new space is wonderful,” Robbie Dircks, longtime TABLE volunteer, said. “I've been volunteering with TABLE for three different locations now, and this new space is more than double the space of the previous location.”

He said the new space allows TABLE to provide food to more children in the community because of the increased storage space and larger area to store and pack the food. He also said the walk-in refrigerator allows TABLE to keep produce fresh for a longer period of time. 

Since the old space’s doors were too small to fit pallets of food, Tippins said, the pallets were delivered in the parking lot and volunteers had to bring items in one at a time. Now, food vendors can drop food and pallets off in the loading dock which makes the process easier. 

She said the search for a new space has been ongoing since 2015, and TABLE chose this space because they knew it could be useful for a food organization, and it was large enough for them to continue expanding over time. 

TABLE is also doing nutrition education and community events including family pizza-making days in the new kitchen, Tippins said, which are important to serve the community more effectively. 

“We wanted it to be a community space — TABLE is a community organization, a community project,” she said. “So, the space is not TABLE’s, where we, the staff, are the only ones that use it and it's for our benefit. No, it's the space itself [that’s] the community’s, and the purpose of it is to serve the community.”

The need for TABLE will only increase as time goes on, Foushee said, because of changes at the federal and potentially state level to programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and SNAP’s Women, Infants, and Children program, making it harder to get food for children.

“There's TABLE in downtown Carrboro, willing to help," Foushee said. "So, I encourage people that are able to donate and support that nonprofit to do so."

It is unfortunate that there are so many families with need in the Orange County area, Dircks said, but it is TABLE’s goal to feed everyone they can, one person at a time. 

Foushee said she is proud of TABLE because they provide the nutrition that children need to function, and that she is glad they are expanding their work to downtown Carrboro. 

“I just see us connecting with more and more families in need in Orange County,” Dircks said. “We're serving 1,100 kids now. I would be hopeful that over time we could serve over 2,000 kids.”

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