When Chef Sera Cuni and her wife, Susan White, started the nonprofit Feed-Well Fridges in 2023, the idea was to both address food waste and food insecurity. The idea — providing free food to community members in fridges at accessible spots across Chatham County — has since blossomed from a “passion project” to the couple’s calling.
The renowned head chef and co-owner of the Café Root Cellar announced Sunday their plans to close the Pittsboro restaurant in September and pivot to scaling up Feed-Well Fridges’ work and meal production. The business, located on Suttles Road in Chatham Park, served its final lunch service on August 28 and will have its last day of regular restaurant service on September 19.
“When we opened our Pittsboro café in 2017,” read the statement from Cuni and White, “we wanted to create a place where people could gather around good food, celebrate life’s milestones, and feel a genuine sense of connection. You helped us bring this vision to life, and we are incredibly grateful for the community that grew around our tables over the last decade.”
Owner and chef of Café Root Cellar Sera Cuni poses for a portrait in front of the Pittsboro restaurant in 2022. (Photo via the Chatham News + Record.)
According to White, the decision will not impact the Root Cellar Café & Catering’s sister operations in Chapel Hill. But with Feed-Well Fridges leading to more than 350,000 pounds of food being saved and redistributed since 2023 — and the number of meals prepared now surpassing 90,000 — the decision to close the Café Root Cellar will allow more time, energy and resources to be dedicated to addressing community hunger and food insecurity. The kitchen capacity for the Pittsboro space will temporarily shift to helping prepare food for Feed-Well, Sunday’s statement said.
“We had no idea what that little project would become,” Cuni and White wrote of the nonprofit. “Over the past three years, our understanding of hunger in our own community has profoundly changed. We have seen firsthand just how many of our neighbors are struggling to put food on their tables. Many regularly make difficult choices between feeding their families and paying mortgages, rent, and utilities. We have heard from older adults with limited incomes who cannot afford groceries and the high cost of their medications. We have watched food disappear from our community fridges almost as quickly as we can stock them. And with every new fridge, every rescued delivery and every nutritious meal prepared, our determination to do more has only grown stronger.”
With that, the entrepreneur duo are planning to expand in three areas: the nonprofit’s food output, its reach, and its production space. The vision for Feed-Well Fridges is to double the amount of surplus food rescued from partnering stores, farms and restaurants while increasing the meal production from roughly 3,000 per month to 5,000. Feed-Well’s fridges are currently in Pittsboro, Siler City, Goldston and Chapel Hill, but the hope is to add fridges using a network of nonprofits and organizations working in the food insecurity space across the state.
Chef Sera Cuni at the first Feed-Well Fridges when it opened in Siler City in 2023.
To achieve those two goals, the third is to move Feed-Well’s food preparation into a bigger space than a “borrowed corner” of Café Root Cellar. Having hit its limit on cold storage and preparation areas, the nonprofit is seeking to build an 8,000-square foot commissary kitchen in the area to better grow. While Feed-Well Fridges recently earned some grants to help with operations, the organization launched a fundraising campaign with the goal of reaching $400,000 for construction.
“This new facility,” wrote Cuni and White, “will move our operations from its limited capacity in a shared restaurant kitchen to a larger space where we can prepare thousands more meals, rescue and redistribute significantly more food, support a growing network of community fridges and reach more people throughout Chatham County, the Triangle and beyond.”
For those looking to visit and celebrate the Café Root Cellar, there is still time. While lunch service has finished, the restaurant will still serve dinners from Thursdays to Saturdays from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and its Sunday brunches from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. through Saturday, September 19.
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