Almost smack dab in the heart of Silicon Valley is a place you can go to if you are hungry and need to get away from the crazy. Down Middlefield road past the avant-garde art infused offices of venture capitalists, amidst the multi-million dollar homes, sits an enclave of sanity where feasts are offered up daily. If you think you might have forgotten what good leadership functions like, or how priorities are kept prioritized, or what it means to really have wealth, go and visit, eat a little. Go away full. A short bike ride away from Stanford University is a soup kitchen that has served hundreds of meals a day for decades.
Serving that many meals is a logistical feat requiring dozens of volunteers and a network of providers all coordinated in an operational dance that, to the untrained eye, can look like chaos. Food arrives from local grocery stores or individual donations—it needs to be sorted and stored. Prep work happens in a large stainless steel kitchen where volunteers wash, peel, slice and otherwise break down the stream of food before the meal is cooked. It is always a hot meal served with some kind of salad and bread, coffee, juice, milk and a dessert. This happens every day. There are some well-funded startups nearby that have much less to show for their investments than St. Anthony of Padua does with the food other people would throw away.
St. Anthony’s has a small paid staff that runs the operation, and they do it far better than many of the high tech companies that surround them. No consulting firms are mapping out efficiency for the kitchen. No board of directors opine quarterly on their balance sheets. There are no Gantt charts or SWOT analyses; action items look more like actions. Team meetings are as likely to take place in front of a dumpster with forklifts whizzing around as they are in an office. Every delivery they receive is “just in time” because there is no waiting for something to arrive—they make do with what they are given. Profit is measured in guests served, and “margin” is a deep understanding of how close to the edge most people live. I have been there when men in suits stood patiently in line for the only meal they would eat that day. I have watched mothers balance multiple trays of food and herd their hungry children to a table. Grandparents eat there, so do the homeless and day laborers. A long line has formed by 11:30 am when the doors finally open. All of these people, from the working poor to migrant families passing through are in that queue before the doors close again promptly at 1:00 pm. At closing, the staff sits down to eat their lunch, and all that’s left to do afterward is clean up and prepare for tomorrow when it will happen all over again. They serve, on average, 200 meals a day, not to mention the clothing distribution and at Christmas, the holiday toy donations. People come on foot, by bike, or in the cars that they have been living out of and they all get a meal. No one goes away hungry if they show up.
There was this one time I was working there in the kitchen carving up cooked turkey carcasses. On occasion St. Anthony’s will get a load of frozen turkeys from a grocery store, and the next morning the whole place will smell like Thanksgiving. Breaking down the birds is easy enough, if messy, and there were three of us in aprons and gloves separating the meat from the bones and putting the good stuff in big stock pots. Nearby a sink was full of squash being peeled and behind me donated sheet cakes were being cut into semi-even quadrangles and put on paper plates for dessert. On a stainless steel table was a lone ceramic blue plate, chipped on edge, with two roasted turkey legs nestled next to a mound of rice. This plate was covered in plastic wrap and stood out from everything else going on because it was apparently being saved for someone.
As I soon found out, the plate was for Nguyen. Nguyen is the Security Guard which, as is true for everyone else at St. Anthony’s is really only part of his job. He is a slight Vietnamese man with an easy smile and a willingness to pitch in. His role at the soup kitchen was to be a calming presence if a mentally unstable guest created problems. He wore a dark blue uniform with the word SECURITY on the left breast and stood near the front of the room where the guests came to empty trays into garbage cans before they left. In my time there I never saw Nguyen have to act as security, but it was clear he was in charge on the dining room floor. He was well-liked and respected; the guests deferred to him. He’d help families navigate to a table, or empty the trash or bring out extra flatware if it was needed. On the day of the turkeys, I was up front too, helping load dirty trays into the kitchen just behind Nguyen. In between scraping food into waste bins and putting forks and knives into baskets, I was teasing Nguyen about his forthcoming lunch on the blue plate. Nguyen was not a large man, he apparently didn’t eat much, but as I found out from him, he had an enduring weakness for turkey legs. Patting his stomach and licking his lips he happily told me: “Going to eat good today!” And we laughed a bit. He is an easy person to like. The kitchen did not show favorites, but when turkey came in, they set aside two dark roasted legs and rice for Nguyen, covered and waiting for the doors to close.
On that day, the big double doors were shut, and the serving station lamps were off. Steam was rising from the water baths that had kept the food warm. I was wiping down the tables as the staff went to get their own lunches; they usually ate together taking the table closest to the kitchen. Nguyen sat with them, always closest to the doors. Just down the long table, I could see him grinning broadly and bringing out his turkey legs. He sat down, peeled back the plastic and eyed one of the drumsticks reverentially. There was a knock on the door. The entry way double doors are framed by windows, and there was a guest, obviously homeless, waving at Nguyen pantomiming praying hands, asking to be let in. Now, letting someone in after closing is not usually done. If you allow one in, you’ll get 10; if you get 10 in you are never closing. Rules are rules. I watched as Nguyen put down his food and stood up to let the man join him. I still have no idea what prompted him to open the doors.
No one else seemed to mind or even pay attention though. The homeless man was effusive in his thanks. Nguyen offered a seat across from his own and then went into the back to fix a plate of leftovers. I guessed there was not much food left in the kitchen when Nguyen came out with a dish: some vegetables, maybe beans, and a piece or two of bread. The man, however, was impressed. As Nguyen sat back down the man thanked him again and reached into his pockets, pulling out plastic packets of Taco Bell sauce. He enthusiastically squirted the hot sauce all over the just delivered food while amiably chatting away. The whole time, Nguyen was smiling and nodding. Then, casually, as is done with family or close friends, Nguyen moved aside the man’s own plate and replaced it with the turkey legs and rice. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the homeless man squirted Taco Bell Sauce on a drumstick and began to eat; I am not even sure he noticed the switch. Waving the drumstick around, regaling Nguyen with some tale I could not hear, they both looked satisfied.
I have a friend who is a sociologist. He describes humans this way: we are the species that will trade food for a good story. I love that idea! A well told tale is sustenance of another kind. Endorphins and serotonin pin-balling between synaptic clefts in our brain might be the same as tucking into a hot lunch on an empty stomach. Maybe. Maybe giving up food for another person is yet part of another older story epigenetically wired into us over generations. Whatever the rationale, it is something to see when it happens. There are stories and then the satiation that comes from understanding bigger truths. The way I remember it, none of us went hungry that day.