Earlier this year I reported on eating vegan in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As the only vegan in a group of five spending a long weekend in Amish country, dining options required a little planning, but it was well worth it upon discovering The Seed, a worker-owned community space and veg cafe in downtown Lancaster. I loved the food; I loved the space.

Thankfully my opinion is shared by others, and the good news is that The Seed is currently looking to expand its space! To do that, they are running an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for the expansion, with a goal of raising $15,000 by June 29. We recently spoke to Fen, one of the brains behind the operation. Here’s our conversation:

Tell us a little bit about the origins of The Seed – what inspired you to open a worker-owned community space?

Well! Four out of the five of us (founding members) met at Occupy Lancaster. We all were involved in various activist groups before our encampment, but it was Occupy that really brought our amazing community together. When the Occupy movement died down, the activism was still thriving and people needed a place to do important community work. The five of us got together and thought that we could run a community space by operating a vegan/vegetarian cafe (something Lancaster did not have). So, that’s sort of how it started:

• Giant brainstorming whiteboards all over our living room.
• Road trips to visit amazing vegan joints and worker-owned collectives.
• Back to the whiteboards (a gagillion times).
• Lots of hilarious experiments in the kitchen.
• Community food tastings and critiques.
• A starter Indiegogo campaign + lots of help from the community.
• And an absolutely unbelievable amount of hard work, sweat and tears!

Also, we all sincerely believe in operating in a worker-owned, consensus based environment. Giving everyone equal power and an equal voice is difficult and challenging because it isn’t something people are used to, but we believe it is necessary work. When people are empowered and supported by community, they come alive and are given the room to tap into their greatest creativity and expression.

Here is our Mission Statement:

Our Mission is to provide local, sustainably sourced food and beverage in an open, safe space for Lancaster’s progressive community; a place to gather and continue the work of social justice, community-building and service to each other and the planet.

What’s the vegan scene like in Lancaster? As a visiting vegan from NJ, my only knowledge of Lancaster was Amish country – decidedly not veg-friendly! What’s the reality like?

The vegan scene is way bigger than we thought it was! In fact, we do very little mainstream advertising but always have people coming through our door. A huge reason for that is the word-of-mouth that’s happening within the vegan community here. Even though Lancaster is moving toward more progressive ideals, we are still behind. The Seed is still the only vege cafe in Lancaster, and many people are still a little confused about what a “collective” is. But we like it here because we want to work to make change in a place that needs change. There are a zillion places like us in Portland, Santa Cruz, NYC, etc. but they all started with one. We are proud to be the first of our kind here and know we will not be the last. In fact, since we’ve been on this journey, other worker-owned collectives have emerged downtown. There’s also a lot of food activism going on here in Lancaster and that’s really exciting and terribly important.

So I guess the best way to say it is: little Lancaster City is in this really great and imperative flux, and we are all excited to be a part of it.

Your Indiegogo campaign is an expansion project – the need for a larger space is a very good thing! What types of groups/individuals patronize The Seed?

We get every demographic of people you could think of, which is really cool. We were actually concerned in the beginning that our place would only be full of Lancaster’s hipster population! Not so though. We are constantly surprised by how many different kinds of people believe in what we are doing. We’ve had tons of musicians come through and play here, we also host seminars, skill-shares, workshops, meditation groups, yoga classes, GMO awareness meetings, the list goes on and on. The goal of the expansion is to be able to work within the cafe and also have the privacy for more community work, meetings etc. We want to be able to offer classes in the middle of the day if we want, which is hard to do now because the cafe portion is usually buzzing. We truly didn’t realize how popular vegan/vegetarian food would be here, so we have to expand.

What advice would you give to others who are considering starting a community space like The Seed in their own area?

Wow. We could probably give a class on this! What not to do…What to do… Some of our advice is:

1. Know that the endeavor will take over your whole life for at least a couple of years. Be ready to commit. Make sure everyone involved in the start up is willing and understands this kind of commitment.
2. Train yourself to listen to others if you have trouble listening. Train yourself to speak up if you have trouble speaking up. Ultimately, the people you embark on this endeavor with will become family. Sometimes you will want to scream at each other, and you might, but learning to communicate with respect, patience, forgiveness and compassion is absolutely vital. If you don’t learn this, you will crumble internally. Not having the mainstream hierarchical structure can make communication very difficult in very unique ways.
3. Make your initial team a group of people who are willing to go the extra mile daily. Every day there will be obstacles and they won’t be obstacles you will expect.
4. Talk to other people who are in collectives. Ask them every question you can think of.
5. Take care of yourself. You can’t do this if you’re at half-tank.
6. Find a good lawyer. Preferably one who is willing to do pro bono work for the collective :)

If you want to help The Seed grow (and we know you do!), head on over to their Indiegogo page and donate whatever you can. Share this campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and beyond! And, if you’re local to Lancaster, head down to The Seed and volunteer! They’re located at 52 North Queen Street, and if you needed another excuse to stop by, here’s one: kombucha on tap.