There are cafes in the crypts of several city churches here, run by volunteers. They produce a limited menu cooked on the spot - one soup, a couple of hot dishes, a couple of cold ones, a couple of desserts, tea, coffee, fruit juice, a cake or two, biscuits - at very reasonable prices. The original purpose was to feed the many homeless or unemployed, but the customers are by no means only those, there are local workers nipping out for a quick lunch, elderly women meeting for a cuppa, passing tourists who came in to visit the church. At the next table there might be someone who lives on the street, with his possessions at his feet, spinning out his tea in the warm, in the other direction two stairheid wifies from the tenements, and across the way two men in suits from the offices nearby.
At lunch-time, yes, you have to queue (what busy eatery is any different) but there is no sense of a charity. The food is not being doled out as a gift from the affluent, you are buying it at cost price, and you queue all together.
Some of the effort that goes into establishing food banks could support this kind of initiative, along with grants to cover the costs (minimal if they are staffed by volunteers and housed in unused basements)
