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Explore commercial ventures with cafes and food courts
Adding secular dimensions to such spiritual symbols as sacramental wine and the miracle of the loaves and fishes, churches from coast to coast are beginning to augment their worship services with mainstream-style food courts and stylish cafes.
Many religious organizations' food facilities still host mainly potluck fund-raisers run by culinary volunteers. However, among a small but growing number of professionally run, church-based operations are a $2 million-a-year food court in suburban Chicago and a bustling cafe on Manhattan's Park Avenue that boasts eclectic menus, premium wines, microbrewed beers and musical performances, including jazz and tango nights.
And in Garden Grove, Calif., television evangelist Rev. Robert H. Schuller who began his career by preaching to car-borne parishioners from atop a snack bar at a converted drive-in theater - has hired museum architect Richard Meier of Getty Center fame to design a 50,OOO-square-foot visitors center and food court for people drawn to Schuller's land(See CHURCH, page 96) mark Crystal Cathedral.
"Churches are starting to see [foodservice] as an evangelical tool," said Frank Scimeca, director of the Harvest Ministry food court at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill.
As the largest church foodservice operation of its type, the 750-seat Harvest Ministry could be called a modern-day Garden of Eatin'. It features pizza, a pasta bar, a grill, Asian and soup-and-salad outlets as well as an organic "Food for Life" concept and a Boston Market-like "comfort food" station, Scimeca said. In addition to church-based catering events, the food court's outlets and 11,000-squarefoot kitchen each week generate 6,500 sales transactions, yielding a $200,000 annual profit that's split between restaurant improvements and the church's building fund.
Impressive numbers also are being notched by the 3-year-old Cafe St. Bart's on Park Avenue in New York. Operating on the large terrace and in the Community House beside the historic St. Bartholomew's Church in Midtown Manhattan, the 350-seat cafe attracts business people and tourists with its variety of appetizers, sandwiches, pastas, dinner entrees and French pastries as well as fine wines and beers. "When it's...