Crown Lecture: Maggie Kane on Dignity, Community, and the Power of a Shared Meal

When Maggie Kane took the stage at Sanford’s 2025 Crown Lecture in Ethics, she didn’t open with statistics or policy jargon. Instead, she asked the audience a simple question: “Where was the last place where you felt truly welcomed?” It was a fitting start for someone who has dedicated her life to ensuring that everyone, regardless of circumstance, feels valued.

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Kane, the founder of A Place at the Table, Raleigh’s first pay-what-you-can café, has built a model that transcends food service. It’s not just about feeding people—it’s about nourishing dignity, fostering community, and reshaping how we think about food insecurity. Over the next hour, she shared stories, insights, and a challenge: What would happen if we stopped seeing hunger as just an economic issue and started treating it as a communal one?

The evening started, much like Kane’s career, with a more personal meeting with a group of Sanford graduate students. Moderated by Maggie Stroud, Sanford’s Associate Director of Alumni Relations, the atmosphere was inviting and enthusiastic, mirroring the boundless energy and warmth of Kane. This student group quickly shared her excitement, covering topics from favorite snacks, restaurant entrepreneurship, and the importance of healthy work/life balance. Sharing her interpersonal ideologies and the origins of her mission to address hunger, the gathering felt more like a meeting of new friends, rather than a formal session.

A Childhood Lesson in Compassion

Kane’s passion for hospitality and service began early. She recalled growing up in Raleigh with parents who modeled the importance of helping others. One of her earliest memories of service was volunteering at a soup kitchen with them.

“I was maybe seven or eight, and I remember standing on my tiptoes to hand out plates of spaghetti,” she said, smiling at the recollection. “But what stuck with me wasn’t just the food—it was the way my parents knelt down to talk to people, how they made eye contact, how they treated every single person with the same warmth they would a friend.”

That experience planted the seeds for what would become her life’s work. It wasn’t just about providing meals; it was about fostering connection. “Food is the great equalizer,” she said. “It brings people together in a way that nothing else does.”

Food Insecurity is Community Insecurity

One of the most powerful moments of the evening came when Kane challenged the traditional view of hunger.

“We often think of food insecurity as an individual problem—something that happens to someone else. But the truth is, food insecurity is community insecurity.”

She went on to explain that when people struggle to afford meals, it doesn’t just affect them. It impacts their ability to work, their mental health, their children’s education, and their participation in society.

“When one person in our community is hungry, we all feel the effects,” she said. “It shows up in our schools, in our hospitals, in our workplaces. We cannot thrive when so many people are just trying to survive.”

The Pay-What-You-Can Model: A Radical Act of Trust

Kane’s nonprofit café, A Place at the Table, operates on a model that defies traditional restaurant economics. Customers can pay the suggested price, pay what they can, volunteer in exchange for a meal, or pay extra to help cover someone else’s meal. It’s a system built on trust—something that, she admitted, raised a lot of skepticism when she first started.

“People told me it wouldn’t work. They said, ‘Maggie, people are just going to take advantage of you.’ And I told them, ‘Good. That’s exactly what I want them to do. I want people to take advantage of a place that offers them dignity and choice, because when people are treated with dignity, they rise to it.’”

She shared a story of a man named Tony, who walked into the café on its very first day. He had been living on the streets and had barely spoken to anyone in weeks. “He came in, sat down, and when our volunteer asked what he wanted to eat, he just looked shocked. He said, ‘You mean I get to choose?’” Kane paused. “That moment was everything. Because hunger isn’t just about a lack of food. It’s about a lack of choice, a lack of autonomy. That’s what we’re really trying to restore.”

Q&A with Norbert Wilson, Director of the Duke World Food Policy Center

To finish the evening, Kane sat down with Sanford’s Norbert Wilson, Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Food, Economics & Community at Duke Divinity School, and Director of Duke World Food Policy Center. As he discussed their shared views on stamping out hunger, he also opened it to the audience for questions that ranged from food waste to policy efficacy. Here are some highlights from that chat.

Hospitality as a Policy Issue

While Kane is best known for her grassroots work, she emphasized that the principles of A Place at the Table have broader policy implications.

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“We often talk about poverty in numbers and statistics, but what about policy that centers human dignity?” she asked. “What if our social services felt less like bureaucratic transactions and more like acts of hospitality?”

She and Wilson pointed to initiatives like universal school meals, expanded SNAP benefits, and livable wages as examples of policies that address food insecurity at its root.

“At the end of the day, hunger is not about a lack of food—it’s about a lack of access. And access is something we can fix if we choose to.”

A Challenge to the Audience: What’s Your Table?

As she closed her time, Kane left the audience with a challenge.

“You don’t have to start a café to make an impact,” she said. "But you do have to do something. I believe that entrepreneurship is community-ship. We all do it together." Later, she added, “Remember, we’re fighting food insecurity, but we’re really fighting community insecurity, and creating this place for people to come together.”

In a world often divided by politics, economics, and ideology, Kane’s message is refreshingly simple: Everyone deserves dignity. And sometimes, that dignity starts with something as simple as a warm meal and a place at the table.