I recently attended an interesting dinner hosted by Five Loaves as a pop-up at a local bike and coffee shop near by, Woodlawn Cycle Cafe. The food was great and I enjoyed nice conversation with folks I would have probably never met otherwise.

Five Loaves is a part of the Urban Avenues initiative, a group here in Birmingham that is reconnecting different communities within our metro area. The concept, imagined in 2013, is to use food as the pathway to better understanding each other. From there, who knows what might be possible from this beginning dialogue.

Five Loaves was started by a committed group of mentors from Urban Avenues and a group of high school students. Together they launched a training program, a weekly test kitchen and conversations on entrepreneurship. A Five Loaves dinner, which happens monthly, is billed as “a night of art, food, and conversation for a larger purpose,” and the event did not disappoint.

I enjoyed the evening so much that we plan to host a Five Loaves dinner here in a couple of months.