How the F.A.R.M. Cafe Giving Option Works

Short version. You buy a Shipley Farms gift card, you choose F.A.R.M. Cafe in Boone as the recipient, we deliver it to the cafe, and the cafe spends it on the beef its kitchen needs. You get a receipt with your name, the date, the amount and the cafe named as recipient.

The longer version is below, because some people giving this way are businesses, and some of them have an accountant who will quite reasonably ask what the paperwork proves.

What happens, step by step

1. You choose an amount. Any of the standard amounts, or any amount you like between twenty five and a thousand dollars.
2. You press Feed people in Boone. It fills in F.A.R.M. Cafe for you. You do not need an address or an email for anybody there.
3. We deliver it to the cafe. Not to a general fund, not to a pool, and not to us.
4. The cafe redeems it when it needs something. It does not expire on a date that suits us. The kitchen draws against it when the kitchen is short.
5. It buys at wholesale. F.A.R.M. Cafe buys from us at wholesale pricing, not at the retail prices on this website, so the amount you gave buys more food than the same amount would have bought at the shop counter.

How many people a card helps feed

Any amount between twenty five and a thousand dollars works, and the gift card page will tell you what the amount you have chosen comes to.

These are the cautious end of the range. We say helps feed rather than feeds on purpose: we send the beef, and the cafe buys everything else on the plate, cooks it and staffs the room. What arrives from us is the protein, which is usually the most expensive thing a community kitchen buys and the first thing it runs short of.

What your receipt shows

Your Shipley Farms receipt identifies you as the purchaser, the date, the amount, the gift card reference, and F.A.R.M. Cafe as the recipient. Keep it. It is the document that shows what you gave and to whom.

If you need a charitable acknowledgment, that comes from F.A.R.M. Cafe rather than from us. We are the farm that sold the food. They are the organization you supported. Ask them and they will tell you what they can issue.

About taxes, plainly

We are not going to tell you this is tax deductible, because whether it is depends on facts about you and about the cafe that we are not in a position to judge, and getting it wrong would be worse for you than saying nothing.

What we can tell you: keep your Shipley Farms receipt. For a contribution of two hundred and fifty dollars or more, IRS substantiation rules call for a contemporaneous written acknowledgment from the qualified organization, which is a reason to ask F.A.R.M. Cafe for theirs rather than relying on our receipt alone. Gifts treated as property rather than cash can carry extra substantiation requirements. Ask F.A.R.M. Cafe what they acknowledge, and ask your own tax adviser what it means for your return.

That is the whole of our position on it. We will make the documentation easy and we will not make you a promise about your taxes.

If you are a business

A lot of companies spend a holiday budget on client gifts and staff thank yous. If you want some of that to land somewhere useful, you can do both in one order. Send the steaks to your clients and send a card to the cafe, on the same invoice, from the same budget line. A two hundred and fifty dollar card helps feed about 123 to 250 people there.

Two things worth knowing at business scale. Tell us whether you want the cafe to know who gave: we default to naming the purchaser, because that is what makes their acknowledgment possible, but say the word and we will handle it differently. And talk to us before giving a large amount, not for our benefit but because it helps the cafe plan if it knows something substantial is coming rather than finding it on an account balance.

Call or email and we will set it up by hand rather than making you fight a cart.

Questions we expect

Can I choose what the cafe gets? No, and that is deliberate. The cafe's cooks choose. They know what the next two weeks need and they will spend it better than a menu picked in advance by somebody who is not in the kitchen.

Does Shipley Farms take a cut? We sell the beef, at wholesale, the same as we would to any wholesale account. There is no fee on top for handling the gift.

Does Shipley Farms match donations? No. We are not claiming a match because we are not making one. What we contribute is the wholesale pricing, the work of finding cuts that feed more people per dollar, and getting it down the road.

Can I give to the cafe directly instead? Yes, and you should if that suits you better. F.A.R.M. Cafe takes donations directly and takes volunteers. This option exists because some people would rather their giving arrive as food from a farm up the road. It is not a replacement for giving them money.

What if the cafe does not need beef? Then the credit sits on their account until it does. It is not use it or lose it, and nobody at Shipley Farms benefits from it going unspent.

Where the cafe is

F.A.R.M. Cafe, 617 West King Street, Boone, North Carolina 28607. Lunch from eleven until two, Monday through Friday. Children under twelve eat free. See them on Google Maps for photographs, current hours and reviews.