By Gabriella Vukman
Amidst Belgrave’s hustle and bustle, a board with the words ‘Pay It Forward’ can be spotted, peering out from the front of Little Hendrix Cafe.
The ‘Pay It Forward’ board is a system where locals can buy or monetarily contribute towards a free meal from the Little Hendrix Cafe for someone in need.
Belgrave resident and co-owner of the Little Hendrix Cafe Alex Palmer said, “We just thought it was a really good idea to create a safe space for the community to support each other, so we got the board, put it up, added some stuff to it and slowly people started catching on.”
“Usually once people order something or have had some food they say ‘I want to donate a meal to the board.’ It usually has a monetary value. They’ll be like ‘I’ll donate $20’ and then we just write ‘$20 towards a meal’ on a docket and put it on the board.
“Because you can see it from the street when you walk past, people can come in and take a docket off the board, hand it to us and use it.”
Alex and his wife Shannon opened Little Hendrix two years ago after moving to the Hills from Melbourne.
The couple named the cafe after their now three-year-old son Hendrix.
Along with the pay it forward board, Alex and Shannon also have a system in which they trade coffees for the herbs and citrus that people in the hills grow in their backyards.
On Tuesday 16 July, Alex published a social media post telling the tale of a man who came into the cafe in need of a free meal.
Describing the man’s gratitude and great surprise at discovering that he could enjoy a free meal, the post has received thousands of likes and contributions to the board have sky-rocketed.
“The response to the Facebook post that I did the other day was nothing short of amazing. I was kind of a bit speechless to be honest,” Alex said.
“I’ve had so many people message me wanting to donate to the board. Even today we have had so many people come in and donate that the board is nearly full.
“The response is amazing. And it’s just great to see the response from the people in this community is that they specifically want to help each other.”
Alex recalled the Tuesday afternoon.
“It was a really, really cold day. It was windy, it was rainy and just terrible weather outside and there was this normal looking guy, probably mid forties and he was looking at the board, puzzled. It looked like he was not having the best day,” Alex said.
“Eventually he came in and he asked me if he could use something off the board and I said, ‘yeah man. Absolutely you can.’”
“He looked at me kind of puzzled like he couldn’t figure out why it was free and I just said ‘look man, order whatever you want and have a seat,’ and I made him what he wanted.”
Alex expressed how grateful the man was to receive a warm meal and said, “He was just so happy at the fact that he was able to come in from the cold and rain and get fed. It was very touching for us to see.”
“He was clearly just a man that was down on his luck that day and it brightened up his day a bit.
“He seemed to have a lot of gratitude and he came back a few hours later just to say ‘thank you.’ He came in with his partner who was also very nice. They said that they really want to add to the board to help someone else out and we said that they don’t have to. That’s not the point. You don’t have to add to it if you take from it. It was nice to see his generosity. He was just having a bad day and I think that little gesture of kindness completely turned it around, which is the point of it.”
Enraptured at the fact that he could make a difference to someone’s day, Alex noted the role bravery plays in seeking help.
Alex said, “It takes a lot of courage for people to admit that they need help and then come in and ask for it. The fact that the man on Tuesday was able to do that took a lot of courage and the fact that we were able to help him made us really happy.”
“Then the response to my post on the internet also made me really happy because you can kind of see that people, especially in the hills, are fundamentally good people and everyone does really want to help each other out,” he said.
“Sometimes you just need an avenue in which to do so, which is the pay it forward board and as we saw from the post, the response is just huge.”
Since the board’s conception, many people have used its coupons for free meals at the Little Hendrix Cafe.
Alex said, “We’ve had quite a few people use it. We’ve put quite a lot of stuff on the board ourselves as well. There’s heaps of coupons on there but you’d be quite surprised by the kind of people that do come in and use it.”
“It’s very easy to think of people that are having a tough time, in a certain way but a lot of them are just really normal people that are struggling to feed themselves but you never really know until they come in.
“It takes a lot of courage for them to come in but when they do, we’re very warm about it. It makes me really happy cooking for these kinds of people because you never really know what they are going through.”
With the ‘Pay it Forward’ board brimming with community support, Alex encourages those in need of a free meal to come down to the Little Hendrix Cafe for a bite.
“What an amazing community we have in the hills. I love the people here. That’s why we moved here from Melbourne, to be a part of it,” Alex said.
“It’s amazing to see the community in action because we really do care about each other and people really do want to look out for each other here which is what makes the Hills and Belgrave where we live such a special place to be, full of really amazing people.
“I don’t think you could say the same for everywhere else in the state but here in the Hills the people are very, very kind and they want to look out for each other and that’s an amazing thing to see.”
