CHARLOTTE -- Friendship Trays, a non-profit that delivers meals to people in need throughout Mecklenburg County, recently opened a restaurant in South End.
All profits from the Friendship Market will go toward the cost of delivering more than 600 meals a day to people who are elderly, disabled or convalescing.
"It's not like everyday I wake up and go, 'Oh, I got to go to this job,'" said chef Chelsea Howard. "It's like, 'I got to go help somebody.'"
Now chefs Howard and Tom Landers are catering to a different audience, making food for the non-profit's new restaurant.
"We just come in and try to get the freshest ingredients and try to go local as much as we can and produce the food that the customers want," said Landers.
The annual food costs for Friendship Trays are between $300,000 and $400,000. Organizers hope the Friendship Market will supplement the organization's budget with a steady source of income beyond donations.
"We have long had the dream of being able to generate more revenue-generating streams to support the mission of Friendship Trays, and we are in such a unique place right now," said Lucy Bush Carter, the executive director of Friendship Trays. "There's so much growth around us in South End. There are people moving in, there are people working nearby, and we wanted to offer them a healthy lunch."
Carter said they furnished the market with donated furniture and painted everything themselves.
"All of it we have done on a shoe string," she said. "We are great stewards of dollars. We can stretch a dollar a very long way."
And every dollar customers spend goes toward the Frienship Trays mission, so the more successful the restaurant is, the more people they can help.
"We're 600 now, but what if we can get 800 next year? That would be great," said Howard. "One thousand a year after that."
The Friendship Market is located on Distribution Street, near the intersection of South Tryon Street and Remount Road. It's open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday.