For those involved in bringing SAME Café to Toledo, Friday marked the end of a long journey. 

“We have been working for the last four years to make this happen,” SAME Executive Director Brad Reubendale said to a crowd gathered as the restaurant officially opened on the main floor of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library’s Main Library with a formal ribbon cutting. 

“My dream has been to open SAME Cafés in downtown libraries across the country,” he said. “Every downtown library has a beautiful building, a prime location, and many have an underutilized café space.” 

Mr. Reubendale’s dream is now well on its way to being realized as the nonprofit restaurant founded in Denver in 2006 has officially made Toledo its second location. It will be open 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday for the foreseeable future.

The name is an acronym for So All May Eat, which represents the organization’s goal to provide food to anyone who might need it. 

Patrons to the café, which occupies the space last used by Sarnies in late 2020, can account for their meals in three ways, by paying what they are able, by volunteering their time to help in the café, or by donating produce. 

The idea to have the restaurant in Toledo after a nationwide search was the brainchild of Steve North, a Toledo resident who runs LifeLine Toledo, a nonprofit, who happened upon the SAME in Denver some years ago while looking for a place to eat.  

“I walked in and we saw the participation board, where you participate for your meal with time, money, or produce. I saw the community mural with all the partners and all this stuff, and it just stopped me dead in my tracks,” Mr. North said, taken with the emotion of the day. “My first thought was this belongs in Toledo. This is us.” 

The first public meeting to try and garner support of any kind for the project was in January, 2021 over Zoom, Mr. North said, mentioning that a planned 30-minute meeting extended past two hours as the more than 200 people on the call kept asking questions. 

“There has just been tremendous energy from organizations, individuals, producers and restaurants,” he said. “One thing I say about SAME Café more than any other is that there are not a lot of things in this world that are completely good, but SAME Café is one of them.” 

The café offers a menu of two soups, two salads, and two pizzas that rotates daily depending on what ingredients are fresh and available.

Diners like Julie Keegan, a friend of Mr. North who went on an early visit to SAME in Denver, described the food as high quality and “Instagrammable,” an opinion shared by many in attendance.   

SAME explored other locations in Toledo before settling on the library, but library director Jason Kucsma said there was never a question as to whether or not SAME Café would work at the Main Library, as the Toledo Lucas County Library continues to lead in its community and in its industry.  

“It is pretty amazing,” Mr. Kucsma said. “I knew there was a lot of community support for this project and for the last couple months I could not go anywhere in town without someone asking me when SAME Café is going to open. Just to see this all coming together today is pretty special.”

Mr. Kucsma noted the number of people from such a variety of places who raised money to get the project off the ground, and how that has and will continue to contribute to the venture’s success. 

He has long contended that the local library system and SAME are a good match because, like those that want to eat at SAME, the library is open to everyone regardless of social or economic status.

“SAME Café is a tried and trusted model and they have been doing this for 16 years,” he said. “There is no reason this can’t be successful here. They were looking at a number of different cities and the Toledo contingent that was advocating for this space did a great job selling Toledo to the owners and the executive director.”  

Mr. Kucsma wants to work with Mr. Reubendale to realize that dream of spreading this idea to other libraries, and beamed about the opportunities that abound in his own location with things like a mural inside the café space, which organizers want to complete by spring.   

“It will likely be a community based mural, maybe a contest or some other collaboration,” Mr. Kucsma said. “We have a rich arts community here especially with the Young Artists at Work that might be a good fit for this.”  

First Published November 4, 2022, 8:43 p.m.