Our Mission

Tricklebee Café is a pay-what-you-can community café that offers healthy meals, food-service training, and spiritual nourishment. We are a ministry of the Moravian Church in America.

What We Offer

We offer a space to foster community, connections, goodwill, and a love for real food with simple ingredients. By offering an inclusive and welcoming space, we bring health, positivity, and peace to our neighborhood.

Our Vision

By providing fresh, healthy, locally-grown food to anyone regardless of ability to pay, we address food insecurity by feeding the immediate need of hunger, while providing resources to educate and inspire people to make a habit of healthy eating. Access to healthy food helps people to better care for themselves and their neighbors, which heals and strengthens community.

Why We Do It

We seek to be a peaceful gathering place in a neighborhood that has experienced violence and neglect. We are a safe, inviting place for neighbors to gather to promote reconciliation and peace. We work to eliminate prejudice and discrimination against the economically and socially marginalized by creating a space where individuals from all backgrounds may gather around the concept of a community table.

OWEE Network

Tricklebee Café is part of the One World Everybody Eats Network along with dozens of cafés across the U.S.

Come Visit Us!

We’re located at 4424 W. North Ave. in the historic Uptown Crossing District of the Sherman Park neighborhood. Enjoy our plant-based freshly-made soups, sandwiches, salads, baked goods, and hot drinks. Gluten-free options available daily.

How Tricklebee began…

While residing in Downey, CA (a suburb of L.A.), Christie Melby-Gibbons (our executive director) worked alongside compassionate neighbors to rescue tons (literally) of newly “expired” groceries and baked goods (all pre-dumpster) from local benevolent businesses. This community-based ministry allowed over 100 neighbors in need of food help to receive free bags of food weekly. These neighbors were impoverished immigrants (many still working toward U.S. citizenship), adults with mental illness, friends who lived in their vehicles or under bridges, those in recovery struggling to find a place where they could belong, and those who had not yet overcome their abuse of harmful substances. Beyond the food help line, one place where these neighbors came together was Open Table—a weekly community meal started by Christie, using the food give out leftovers. Everyone who dined at Open Table helped to set the table (which was really 4 long tables pushed together into one large rectangle), washing and chopping vegetables (it was usually a vegetarian meal), and clean-up (dish-washing, wiping down tables, moving furniture). The healthful, community-fostering, and participatory nature of this meal was a gift to so many people! For neighbors without homes, this was the only warm meal with vegetables in it that they would eat all week. For neighbors who were lonely (one wealthy widower, in particular), this was the only meal they would share with others all week. Despite glaring differences, those who participated in Open Table felt loved in that setting. Though unaware, they were already functioning as a community café, and (unofficially) as part of the One World Everybody Eats (OWEE) Network. After hosting Open Table meals weekly for 5 years, Christie learned that these types of meal ministries are happening (with state and IRS approval!) across the nation. Her curiosity turned into action as she began to dream of creating a café space where the “trickʼll be” offering real food to all, regardless of their ability to pay. Christie moved her family back to the Midwest where they are from, and joined the OWEE Network of Community Cafes. Tricklebee Cafe incorporated as a nonprofit Wisconsin business in December 2015, and after a full year of renovating a run-down storefront, opened its doors in November 2016. In 2020, after 4 years of renting the front unit, Tricklebee Cafe was able to buy the entire building, doubling the cafe dining capacity and providing staff housing. We have served over 100,000 meals since opening.