If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the food court is the heart of a shopping mall. But at West Acres Shopping Center here in Fargo there’d never been one.
In 2000 the West Acres partners and I, the CEO, decided to revamp the center and add more heart—and a food court—to our mall. We wanted the design to reflect our community’s values, especially its generosity.
Our company had helped the Great Plains Food Bank, which gives food to needy families, find a headquarters in Fargo. Now we wondered if there was a way we could help fill its shelves. Our team gathered at the mall office to brainstorm.
“What if we put recipes on tiles to decorate the walls?” someone said. “People could share favorite dishes.”
“And with each tile,” someone else said, “they could make a twenty-five dollar donation to the food bank.”
The food bank and the mall partners loved the idea, so we created order forms and put them in kiosks across the mall. Forms disappeared and reappeared in the mall office, full of family favorites: caramel rolls, green tomato pie, duck fajitas. My wife, Carol, offered up her white chili recipe, a dish so good our kids agreed on it.
In a few months, the community raised fourteen thousand dollars for the food bank and we had more than 550 recipes for our walls.
Soon after the food court reopened in 2001, I strolled through with a staff member. The tiles gleamed in the sun beaming through the skylight. Off to the side a family wandered through the court, peering at the walls like a museum exhibit. What are they doing? I wondered.
Then the boy jumped up and down, pointing at a tile. “That’s ours!” he cried. “Yes, it is,” his mom said. She nodded toward a tile a row over, “That’s a recipe I want!” She whipped out pen and paper. My coworker and I looked at each other. “We should make a cookbook!” he said. And that’s what we did.
Recipe for Sharing, published in late 2001, is still selling well. So far it has raised forty-six thousand dollars for the food bank. The tiles started as part of a remodeling project, but I see them as much more than great décor.
I see the wonderful things that are possible when people share the best of themselves.
Try Carol Schlossman’s Warmhearted White Bean Chili!
