About the Café
Stone Soup Café is dedicated to breaking down social barriers through our Pay-What-You-Can model, bringing people together to cook and eat, increasing equitable access to healthy food, building solidarity with our neighbors, and cultivating a beloved community. >> ANNUAL REPORTS
Mission
To create a community space where all are welcome to share nourishment, connection, and learning for body, mind, and spirit.
Vision
To nourish our community with healthy food, sustainable systems, responsive mutual aid programs, creativity, and a vibrant culture of belonging.
Café History
Founded in Montague by the actor Jeff Bridges and Zen Peacemaker, Bernie Glassman, our community meal was created to affirm the dignity of all participants. In 2011, the Café moved to Greenfield. In 2012, the community chose the name “Stone Soup Café,” and we’ve operated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization since 2021.
Our Location
Honoring Our Land, History, and Responsibility
Stone Soup Café is located in Greenfield, MA, on the corner of Hope Street and Main Street. We serve the most rural county in Massachusetts, Franklin County.
Greenfield is in the Connecticut River Valley on the ancestral homelands of the Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Wabanaki Confederacy. The history of Native Americans is our shared history and a vital part of American history. It is a living and evolving story of resistance, resilience, economic strength, and cultural revitalization. It is also a painful history of wrongdoing and loss. Brutal genocide and land grabbing are an undeniable part of our collective history. We understand that colonialism, racism, and capitalism intertwine in a harmful, vicious cycle. We are implicated in that harm unless we work to undo it.
We continue to look to Indigenous communities for ways to show up and follow their lead. We support the Nolumbeka Project, Visioning B.E.A.R. Circle Intertribal Coalition, Ohketeau Cultural Center, and United American Indians of New England (UAINE).
Let's learn together. It is important for us all to understand the history that has brought us to reside on the land we inhabit, and to acknowledge our place within the land's history. So much has been stolen from enslaved people and Indigenous people. Labor. Land. Language. Ceremony. Food. Education. Housing. Healthcare. Governance. Medicines. Kinship. Let’s acknowledge the inhumanity of slavery, and the violence that colonialism and white supremacy continue to inflict on all of our bodies.
This is only a first step in acknowledging that we must work to heal and repair our community as we co-create for belonging. We encourage you to engage in this work with us.
