About

Our Impact: 2024 Highlights

17,500

pay-it-forward meals from December 2023-September 2024

5,460

volunteer hours

3,500

meals provided to the CMHA Street Team to feed encampment residents

How do your donations make a difference? Our 2024 Annual Report has all the answers. In this report, you'll find a look back at the last ten years. And some stories that showcase the remarkable things that you’ve made possible. You help make 541 a space where everyone is welcome around the table.

Read our annual report

Donate to expand the impact

Our Purpose

All Together at the Table: A Welcoming Space for Connection, Community, and Good Food

What we do

541 Eatery & Exchange is a non-profit pay-it-forward cafe working to help our neighbours overcome the impacts of isolation, poverty, and injustice by cultivating a community of mutuality in our neighbourhood. Inspired by our Christian values, we are dedicated to welcoming all our neighbours inclusive of their circumstances, identity, and status.

Our Values

Community

Sharing Life at the Table

We nurture, celebrate, and care for physical, spiritual, and relational experience.

Hospitality

Extending Welcome

We welcome individuals to sit at the table as they are. We cooperate and collaborate with community partners, encouraging and working with them to use the space generously.

Belonging

Knowing Your Name

We value the desire to know and be known, encouraging, and supporting each individual’s hope and courage.

Advocacy

Speaking out/with/for Each Other

We support our team and our neighbours in their efforts to bring greater joy, hope, and justice to our world.

Our Strategic Plan

541 Eatery & Exchange has paused, considered, and paved a path forward to sustainable operations and community building within the Hamilton community. We’re sharing our three ‘strategic themes’ — core commitments of what we want 541 to be all about for the years to come. We invite you to join us on the journey forward!

Read 2024-2027 Strategic Plan