Profile Piece | By: M. Claire Morrison
I met Dorcia at the new Everytable Hollywood location on the corner of Santa Monica and Highland, a little after 1 PM on a Thursday in mid-February. On the tail end of the lunch rush, the doors to her newly opened franchise were steadily opening and closing with an array of new customers, the retrieval of pick-up orders, and just an incredibly diverse, Los Angeles clientele. It was remarkable to witness the energy reminiscent of a proper midtown Manhattan lunch spot tucked in the corner of a Hollywood mini-mall.
We had planned to have a safely distant interview outside the storefront, but the construction of the Everytable’s new patio along Santa Monica Blvd proved to be a bit too distracting, so Dorcia said, “I know you love to walk. I love to walk. Let’s walk and talk!” And just like that, we were off.
We headed north down Highland and casually got to know each other, until we made a left at Salt’s Cure at the corner of Lexington, and walked west until we found a mostly quiet curb nestled against the ledge of a window box planter and an office building. Six feet apart, both double masked, with my iPhone voice recorder app resting between us, hidden in the ferns – we connected.
“You are a true California girl,”
is something Dorcia’s boyfriend says to her often. To which Dorcia responds, “Yeah – I just don’t know how to surf. That’s the only thing.”
Dorcia grew up in South LA and was raised by her single mother, whose financial struggles and some physical disabilities led the family to have to frequently uproot and move neighborhoods. Watts to the Crenshaw District to Lennox. “I learned how to travel,” says Dorcia, with a clever laugh. “I learned how to walk a lot of places and use the bus.”
But – despite the challenges, Dorcia considers her mom, who sadly has since passed away, to be one of the biggest influences of her life. And now with three children of her own, there is even more gratitude for her mother’s commitment to her upbringing.
“My mom was so cool,” Dorcia says in an earnest manner. “She was stern, but with a great sense of humor. She was witty. She worked very hard, even though she was sick all the time. She was the type of woman who would give you the clothes off her back.”
Growing up, Dorcia recalls all the times her mother would let people sleep on their front porch if they had nowhere else to go. She would buy extra food at the food bank, freeze it, and cook for people in the neighborhood that would line up in her front yard.
“Faith without works is dead,” is something Dorcia recalls her mom, who had a strong sense of faith, always reminding her children. This sentiment further explained as, “you can have all the faith in the world, but you have to put in the work. You can’t just expect things to happen for you.”
This abundant generosity is generational. Dorcia explains that her grandparents were farmers. “They always gave and believed in helping other people. They were comfortable. They had a lot of land. So, they would help a lot of people with clothing, food, and whatever they could.”
Dorcia believes her entrepreneurial spirit not only came from her grandparents, but also from her dad. Though her relationship with her father was distant during her upbringing, they have since grown closer in their later years.
Dorcia recalls, “He was always opening some sort of business. He had a job as a security guard, but he was always talking about some sort of business he wanted to start. And then it wouldn’t work, but that was him – always trying to run some sort of business.”
The Road to Hollywood
Dorcia was first led to Everytable through her job as a teacher’s aid. One of the parents at the school she worked at told Dorcia about this group she was involved with called “GroceryShips” (now called FEAST). This group of people would meet once a week and learn how to eat healthy and make healthy recipes. They then would receive a small scholarship to go grocery shopping so they could try the recipes at home with their families, without having to dip into their own budget.
Dorcia’s interest was piqued as she, herself, was just starting a journey to become more healthy, and when her friend graduated from the program, she gave her one allotted application to Dorcia.
It was then that Dorcia was first introduced to FEAST founder, and ultimate founder of Everytable, Sam Polk, who personally led the FEAST group that Dorcia attended.
(FEAST is an acronym that stands for:
Food, Education, Access, Support, Together)
Within this six-month program that is still around today, a group of twelve gather in a circle, and Dorcia explains, “We sit around and talk about food and our relationship with food.”
During one particular FEAST session, Dorcia recalls how one of her friends in the program, a woman named Luz, said to Sam something along the lines of, “You know, Sam, learning about food is great and learning how to eat and cook healthy is great, but one of these days the kids are going to be in the back of the van screaming and yelling ‘were hungry!’ and … we are going to go to McDonalds.”
The whole room laughed and agreed. Dorcia explains how she will never forget Sam’s reaction: “He just sat back in his chair, with this look on his face, shaking his head.” Clearly, this was the moment the lightbulb for Everytable was first illuminated, and sure enough, shortly thereafter, Sam and his team started building a neighborhood retail concept for healthy, quick, affordable food — that was also good. And the first Everytable started six years ago in 2015.
During this time, Dorcia started volunteering, giving food demonstrations and continuing to build her relationship with Sam. And after a few more Everytable’s opened up, Sam asked Dorcia if she would like to be a manager. Hesitant at first, as Dorcia already had a full-time job and business that she ran on her own, Sam told her to think about it. She responded with a compromise by starting as a lead and figured out how to make two nights a week work at the Crenshaw-Baldwin Hills Plaza location.
Instantly falling in love with Everytable, when the manager position came back around again, she immediately took it, and left her job as a teacher’s aid.
In September of 2020, Dorcia was ill and experiencing time in and out of the hospital and Sam continued to check in on her. One day she got a call from Sam saying, “we need to talk.”
Dorcia recalls Sam’s words, “Remember we talked about you owning an Everytable … I want you to be the first social equity franchisee … which means you are going to own an Everytable but you don’t have to put money down on it, you are going to be trained on how to run a business, and once you’re done with all the training, we’re going to sign papers and it’s going to be your business.”
Sam told her to think about it for a few days, but Dorcia knew she wanted to be a part of this right away. “I’m going for this,” Dorcia thought to herself knowing she had to get strong due to her illness. “I was literally at home working, but gasping for breath at the same time.” She had three months before opening day.
So Dorcia did get stronger. A little bit every single day. She recalls, “I started walking 10 minutes a day. And I would come home and be so tired and think 10 minutes?! I need to be working 8 hours a day!”
But after a couple weeks she was walking 15 to 20 minutes a day. And then 30 minutes a day. And then 45 minutes. And then one hour. Before long she was finally walking two hours a day, no problem.
Pay it Forward
“Being around people and serving people is something that I really, really enjoy. Like I don’t mind sweeping the floors, I don’t mind picking up dishes. It’s fun to me. I’m watching all these people so happy because they don’t even realize they are happy because this room is clean,” says Dorcia.
There is a “Pay It Forward” board in the Everytable Hollywood location, where patrons have the option to pay for a future patron’s meal.
“We have to keep paying it forward,” says Dorcia, who tells me about all the people who helped her during the hardest times in her past. Especially when she was homeless, taking care of her children after her divorce – when all they had was a car, and she was able to find help from a shelter and her church family.
“I never heard from anyone ‘pay it back,’ I always heard ‘pay it forward.’”
And for Dorcia, this isn’t just a financial commitment to one another; it’s so much more. “It’s listening to somebody, giving them a little extra food when you have it, talking, smiling.”
“Especially people of color. I know a lot of people that have worked very hard in their lives and are still struggling in their 50’s and 60’s.”
What’s in store for Dorcia in the next five years?
“I see myself owning this Everytable story at the corner of Santa Monica and Highland. And I see it being a million-dollar business. I see my children working with me and running the store. I see us buying a home.”
Dorcia sees a future where she potentially will own her own fourplex and make things easy for the people who live there. She wants to have a room full of the essentials: toilet paper, toothbrushes, etc. This way her tenants will only have to worry about making their rent payments. She has a strong desire to make life easier and better for those around her because of all that she went through in her past.
Above & Beyond
At Everytable, they use the expression “above and beyond” when it comes to the type of hospitality and customer service they deliver. “We give our guests a little extra something on the way out … like ‘take an extra bag of chips’ or ‘grab a water …’”
These small gestures have a deeper connection to Everytable’s core set of values. This gesture acknowledges the gratitude they have for everyone who steps foot in one of their stores, because supporting their business means they can continue to open up other stores in communities that really need it.
Dorcia naturally gravitates true hospitality and real human connection. The best way I can portray this is that Dorcia is the type of person that always does the survey at the end of a service phone call. “So often people take the time to leave criticism,” she says, “but we don’t complement each other enough.”
She always gives people the benefit of the doubt, too. She recalls one time when a customer at a previous job was unusually hostile toward her and her co-workers. Instead of taking it personally, she calmed the woman down, and simply asked her, “is everything okay?” To which the woman then broke down, and confessed she was under some deep stress.
“You never know if someone is just having a bad day,” says Dorcia.
She also does this anytime she’s on a phone call with a customer service representative. She will ask them their name, and how their day is going, and what the weather is like in whatever city they are currently. This helps them to slow down, feel heard, connect. And when the phone call ends, she’ll ask them: “Is there anyone I can talk to let them know how amazing you were today?”
Dorcia is a natural leader that sees the good news in people and understands the deep importance in recognizing people – acknowledging them. One compliment can literally change the course of someone’s life. Or, simply give them the drive to work a little harder.
Which leads me to say, if you’re ever having a particularly bad day, I suggest you make your way to the Everytable in Hollywood. I guarantee you Dorcia’s warm welcome is going to make it all better.
Toward the end of our interview, I asked Dorcia what words her friends would use to describe her. Dorcia said many great things, all of which I emphatically agree with: generous, kind, fun… But it was the way she answered this question that stood out to me most. Dorcia is a confident, strong, and deeply self-aware person, who knows exactly who she is, where she came from, and where she is going.
Dorcia is aware. That is the word I would use to describe her best.