After a semester of serving food to a growing number of customers, the student organization Slow Food UW's café program ended the year with its final lunch Wednesday.
The café is a student- and volunteer-run program that serves local and affordable meals to students, staff and the community. It is located at The Crossing church and serves sandwiches, soup and salad every Wednesday from noon to 2 p.m.
Slow Food UW encourages environmentally friendly practices and using quality ingredients in cooking, and opened the café to serve fresh food at an affordable price, Slow Food UW intern Andrea Snow said.
Snow said the café's success comes from students' word of mouth. She and Slow Food's two other interns originally planned to advertise the program, she said, but realized it was not necessary after customers effectively spread the word.
""The café project has been a great success for [Slow Food], starting off serving about 20 people the first lunch and now serving over 200 in 2 hours, with a line out the door,"" Snow said.
Snow said she hopes future interns will continue to strengthen the program's success.
""We do not want this to be a project that is one shot and it's dead,"" said Snow. ""We want it to become an integral part of slow food.""
Volunteers at Slow Food would like the café to remain open in the summer, and Snow said the organization is hoping to receive a grant from the university to compensate interns for its work.
