Students at App State with the Environmental Justice Coalition hosted a pop-up thrift shop fundraiser from Feb. 19-20. in the Plemmons Student Union for the Feed Boone for a Day program at FARM Cafe.
Dezirae Britton and Sam Cullen, both senior sustainable development majors, helped organize and host the event. Britton, a supporter of FARM Cafe’s food and community work, wanted to host an event catered toward students that also combined her passion for thrifting.
“I really love FARM Cafe. They are a nonprofit restaurant, and they do a lot of good work for the community, and their food is always bomb, and I wanted to host a really cool event catered towards the students on campus,” Britton said. “And I was like, ‘What do I like to do? I like to thrift.’”
Britton believes FARM Cafe does a lot of good for the community through offering free meals and allowing the opportunity to pay it forward through volunteer work.
Britton sourced clothing for her pop-up thrift shop by networking with various local Boone thrift stores, as well as friends and classmates.
“I feel like thrift stores have so much overstock and they would be totally willing to help us out, and they were,” Britton said. “Ram’s Rack was really cool, they let us pick out whatever clothes we wanted, we got Lucky Dog Vintage and Korner Thrift Store, and then a bunch of friends.”
The fundraiser was an opportunity to provide affordable clothing to App State students.
“I think it’s a good opportunity too, to make clothes more accessible for students because we can dictate the prices, and we could choose what we were donating. It’s hand-picked and for the student crowd,” Cullen said.
The goal of the pop-up thrift shop was to raise enough money to offset the cost of operations of FARM Cafe.
“We basically want to cover the daily expenses of operation for FARM Cafe, so all the proceeds from what we sell is just going towards the cafe to support them,” Cullen said. “$600 is the minimum to cover their operations for a day and so as long as we can make that much, anything that they do will be solely profit so that they can put it into other parts of their organization.”
The fundraiser served as a connection between App State students and the Boone community.
“I think it’s a really cool opportunity to kind of be like a liaison between the community and the student body and kind of help build that bridge a little bit by raising money and localizing the economy,” Cullen said.
