On Monday, Dec. 8, the Dallas location of Hugs Cafe celebrated its grand opening at 2918 Live Oak St. with a ribbon cutting. Photo by Madelyn Edwards.
Hugs Cafe in Dallas is open for business.
Hugs (which stands for hope, understanding, grace and success) is both a restaurant and a nonprofit that aims to “enhance the lives of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities through training and employment,” according to its website. It was born out of founder Ruth Thompson teaching cooking classes to adults with special needs in McKinney before Hugs Cafe officially formed in 2012.
Until now, there was only one Hugs Cafe. Then on Monday, Dec. 8, the Dallas location celebrated its grand opening at 2918 Live Oak St., southwest of Exall Park. And thanks to The Meadows Foundation, the cafe is able to operate in this space rent-free.
The cafe’s menu is similar to the one served at the McKinney location, except this Hugs will serve a full line of coffee beyond drip coffee (ie — espressos, cappuccinos, lattes, etc.) because the White Rhino Coffee Foundation donated a fully automatic espresso machine. The food served at Hugs is made from scratch, said Hugs Cafe Inc. Executive Director Lauren Smith, whose favorite menu items are the grilled Reuben sandwich, the Greek salad with chicken and the wedding cake cookie.
“Everything is made from scratch in house, except for our bread,” Smith said.
Moving forward, Smith hopes that Hugs will be well embedded in its new neighborhood.
“We’re excited for us to be a busy restaurant, but we’re also a hub for catering and community events,” she said. “We would love for Hugs to be a well-known restaurant name in the community that you’re seeing at all the wonderful pop-ups and places that you’re seeing, your other favorite Dallas restaurants. We really just want to be embedded in the community. We want to have volunteers, high community engagement. We just we just want to be loud and proud, and we want to have been fully embraced by the community, which sounds like we’re off to a good start.”
Hugs Cafe is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
