Beloved Berkeley restaurant that fed the needy will close today after 45 years

Early last year, Collin Doran came up with a radically simple plan to feed the homeless people he’d seen struggling outside Homemade Cafe, his popular Berkeley restaurant that’s operated in the neighborhood for 45 years. He began to serve them free breakfasts of two eggs with the works — no questions asked.

Unfortunately, Doran won’t be able to keep his generous plan going, because he can no longer afford to operate his cafe, even with the good will and support of many loyal customers and after the cafe received national coverage this year from Today and the Washington Post.

New Year’s Day, is the Homemade Cafe’s final day in business. A fixture at the corner of Sacramento Street and Dwight Way, the restaurant will open at 9 a.m. and plans to serve customers until 3 p.m.

“It is with great sadness and disappointment that we have to close,” Doran shared on Facebook. “It is just financially impossible to stay open. In today’s economics, running a small, locally owned, full-service restaurant that serves homemade food out of quality ingredients, at relatively reasonable and affordable prices, while valuing its employees and refusing to pay less than a living wage, is apparently not possible.”

The Homemade Cafe originally opened in 1979, and Doran often ate at it while he growing up in Berkeley. After working different jobs at various Bay Area restaurants, including at Homemade, he purchased the cafe in 2011 and continued its simple “mission of serving great food.”

After becoming owner, Doran began to pay attention to the homeless people standing outside his restaurant, asking customers for money and food. It never occurred to him to try to make them leave. Instead, he said it hurt him to see people go hungry, so he came up with a plan to feed them. “For me, it’s a basic human right: People should have food, shelter and medical care. In our society, no one should go hungry.”

Doran said he began to informally offer free breakfasts to anyone who was going through tough times, whether they were unhoused or they were out of work and having trouble paying the bills. Meanwhile, his cafe enjoyed its share of boom times over the years. But more recently, it’s been beset by many of the challenges and rising costs that come with trying to run a restaurant in a notoriously tough industry and in the pricey Bay Area. Then came the upheaval of COVID-19, which left Homemade Cafe reeling, as Doran explained.

“We tried to evolve, pivot, change with the times all the while staying true to our goal of being a positive part of this community,” Doran said on Facebook.

Even as Homemade Cafe struggled, Doran remain committed to feeding hungry people, because he believed that helping others was integral to the restaurant’s mission. During the pandemic, he said he noticed an uptick in people needing food assistance in the Berkeley area, and not all were homeless.

Doran formalized his “Everybody Eats” program in early 2023. He told the Post he was inspired by the free breakfast program the Black Panthers instituted in 1969. Here’s how it worked: Customers could donate $5, which would go toward “free food” cards available inside the restaurant and given out in the community. A hungry person could walk in with the card and use it to receive a meal of two eggs any way, plus potatoes, toast and coffee. Homemade also offered free dinners to people the night before Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, Doran invested more than $200,000 of his own savings to keep the cafe open. He also launched a GoFundMe page that asked customers to chip in for operational costs, so that he could continue to pay employees a living wage after they “unanimously and unambiguously” volunteered to take 20% pay cuts.

Both the GoFundMe campaign, which raised more than $56,000, and the national coverage about the “Everybody Eats” program helped the Homemade Cafe garner positive publicity,  which made Doran think its fortunes could be changing. But then reality began to set in. “It helped, but not enough,” he said.

In an interview, Doran tried not to sound too downhearted. He said he’s proud of the kind of community that the Homemade Cafe built with its customers and others who live in the area.

“I feel like we had a good run, and we survived a lot of things during the pandemic,” said Doran, who also lives in the neighborhood. On Facebook, he told his followers: “We will no longer get to welcome you in as if you were a loving family member, but you will always be in our hearts and we have memories to cherish for a lifetime. Thank you again for all the years, the eggs cracked, the bacon served, the pancakes flipped, the coffee poured — which you refilled.”

They, in turn, expressed their sorrow and thanks.

“I am heartbroken about this,” Monica Hawkins-Peralta wrote. “My husband and I went for breakfast while dating, and as newlyweds the day after our wedding. We have been with you with our children and grandchildren. Good luck to you with your future endeavors and thank you for many happy times.”

And customer Nancy Humphrey posted, “This was a gut punch to me; I can only imagine how you all feel. Homemade has been a beloved constant for us for decades. I’m so sorry for your, and our, loss.”

Details: 2454 Sacramento St., Berkeley; www.homemade-cafe.com