About
This video shares a bit of Feast’s story - check it out!
Overview
We are a group of neighbors. Some are from Spokane, some are from around the world. We share a few things in common: one is the conviction that Spokane should welcome former refugees and immigrants, weaving them into the fabric of our civic life. Another is that food has a wonderful way of bringing people together and breaking down barriers. A third is simple: Spokane needs more great global cuisine! We're launching Feast World Kitchen: an incubator space to empower immigrant chefs. Join us.
who we are
Feast World Kitchen is a downtown restaurant (3rd & Cedar) for Spokane's immigrant and former refugee community to share their culture through excellent international cuisine.
the mission
Feast Collective elevates and empowers immigrants and former refugees as leaders. We use international cuisine as a platform for economic resilience, holistic growth, and culture-sharing.
the Vision
For all former refugees and immigrants to experience full belonging in the Spokane community and to have opportunities to build healthy, flourishing lives.
Feast World Kitchen (3rd & Cedar downtown) is our first programmatic step: a restaurant and catering company that incubates small, immigrant-owned food businesses, teaches career skills, builds positive connections between community members, and shares culture with Spokane through food.
Whenever customers spend “dining out” dollars at Feast, over 90 cents of each dollar goes to the Immigrant family or individual who cooked the day’s meal from their home culture! Yep, that’s right: thanks to our financial and in-kind supporters, the independent contractor chefs who cook in our program work hard to plan their menu, source and buy their ingredients, and then prep, cook, serve, and clean A LOT when it’s their day at Feast. But for all this work, these entrepreneurs earn the lion’s share of their revenues.
Many use this supplemental income to save for a home purchase, for further education, or to invest in their own small businesses (food or otherwise). In short, the funds they are with Feast lead to greater flourishing for families and individuals who came to Spokane as Immigrants or Refugees.
The Back Story: A Community Effort... to Build Community via Food
In the past few years, Dan Todd, Maisa Abudayha, and Ross Carper walked parallel but different paths. Dan launched Inland Curry, a weekly pop-up carryout spot at 9th & Walnut (out of the Woman's Club). Directly across the street from the Woman’s Club is the aparment where Maisa lived with her family. Maisa, who is an asylum seeker from Jordan, was beginning her own Middle Eastern & Mediterranean catering business to share culture and help further establish her family in Spokane. A couple blocks away at 10th Ave & Maple, Ross rolled out The Compass Breakfast Wagon, a neighborhood-based weekend food trailer.
All three have been greatly blessed by friendships alongside former refugees in Spokane -- Dan through hosting a successful monthly refugee-chef dinner series, Maisa as a bilingual specialist working for Spokane Public Schools helping Arabic-speaking students, and Ross through his work at First Presbyterian Church (FPC), helping organize World Relief "Good Neighbor Teams" and befriending international kids and families on the lower south hill. FPC has a long history of befriending immigrant neighbors, including The Barton School, a free English language program that has been going for over 50 years.
When the former Arctic Circle / Sushi Yama building came available and FPC purchased it in early 2019 as an investment (both financially and as a way to impact the good of the neighborhood), Dan and Ross saw an opportunity. They began exploring (with several other neighbors) the idea of taking a big leap: forming a new nonprofit that combines their love of food and cross-cultural friendship. Former asylum seeker Maisa Abudayha joined the conversation and began taking on new leadership opportunities. In summer 2019, she used Ross's food trailer to serve her delicious Jordanian food as a pilot project, cooked as a substitute at Inland Curry, and served in leadership with Feast's newly forming collective of international chefs. A board was formed that includes friends with tons of wisdom. Papers were filed!
And so, after months of conversation, dreaming, planning, and action with a diverse group of leaders -- and FPC's generous offer to rent the building at a discounted rate -- Feast Collective was born into the world in the summer of 2019.
Since then, this 501(c)(3) nonprofit has served nearly 100 families who have cooked with us in our restaurant and catering programs (as of early 2023). We’ve pivoted multiple times, added new opportunities like catering and product wholesaling, weathered the storm of COVID-19, and come together as a supportive network of friendships — always seeking to serve wonderful international cuisine to the community and help families make great income and build career skills while doing it. But more importantly than food and money and skills are the relationships and connections that help Immigrants flourish and grow as leaders in the Spokane community.
And: Feast’s impact not only for people who cook. Today, we use our restaurant dining room for our growing “Table Time” program — an open invitation on Wednesdays (noon-5pm) and Fridays (9am-noon, 2-4pm) for members of Spokane’s Immigrant communities to receive practical support on job applications, resumé building, paperwork, and any other community resource navigation they need.
The “why”
So far, we’ve worked with roughly 100 chef families in our catering, restaurant, and wholesale programs. Some of us in leadership are former refugees and Immigrants ourselves, and we do this work because we believe former refugees and Immigrants in Spokane should be met with love, hospitality, celebration, friendship, opportunity, and shared cultural learning and understanding.
We don't believe these new Spokane community members should be met with fear, racism, bigotry, scapegoating, and suspicion. Feast World Kitchen creates a needed space for the former, as we try to do our part to dismantle the latter.
Together, we want to
Bring the community together joyfully around food, a universal language.
Provide opportunities for flourishing for our neighbors from around the world.
Make Spokane a better, more hospitable (and flavorful!) place.
Ways You Can Help
Fill in this volunteer form and join the unfolding story of Feast World Kitchen! (you’ll get a monthly email)
Join us by donating to help sustain our work!
COME EAT in our restaurant any Wednesday - Sunday for lunch or dinner!
We want to express our HUGE thanks to the Spokane community. You have supported this project so well!
