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Gate City Bank’s 2026 Giving Hearts Day donation is helping a Fargo community café – built on dignity, local food and the simple belief that everyone deserves a place at the table – keep its food truck rolling.
When John* walked up to the Heart-n-Soul food truck, unable to pay for his food, he wasn’t embarrassed, and he didn’t try to hide his need for a free meal. Instead, he stood proudly and smiled as volunteers welcomed him and greeted him by name. In addition to his meal, he ordered food to take home to his parents, and when he sat down to eat, several people joined him.
John, who has become a Heart-n-Soul regular, knows that when he sees the community café truck, he won’t be turned away, no matter how much – or how little – he’s able to pay.
At the Heart-n-Soul food truck, there are no set menu prices. No one asks for proof of need. No one measures whether a person deserves a meal. Instead, a volunteer greets them, takes their order and offers the same warmth to every guest who comes to the window.
“We basically just say, you know what, we’re glad you’re here,” said Leola Daul, Heart-n-Soul founder and executive director.
That welcome has been central to the organization Daul launched in 2016. Inspired by a magazine article she’d read three years earlier, Daul wanted to open a place where everyone could eat together, regardless of what they could pay.
The model is simple. Guests pay what they can. Some volunteer. Some pay nothing. Others pay what they would normally spend on lunch, or more, to help cover meals for neighbors who cannot. It’s not a free meal program, Daul explained, but a community café that depends on the community’s generosity to continue to operate.
“Whether you give a dollar, whether you give $20, it’s all helping us to continue to serve our community,” Daul said. “Heart-n-Soul is for everybody.”
The organization’s growth has been steady, moving from pop-up meals to sack lunches during the pandemic, then to a food truck that allows the café to reach neighborhoods where transportation can be a barrier.
In 2025, Heart-n-Soul served more than 11,000 meals with 71% of guests paying what they could, paying for the meal through volunteer work or unable to pay anything. That means fundraising is crucial to keeping the organization going.
Then in February of 2026, Heart-n-Soul was named the winner of Gate City Bank’s $25,000 Giving Hearts Day donation contest.
“This gift keeps the food truck rolling into neighborhoods that need connection just as much as they need nourishment,” Daul said, adding that the bank’s support is expected to help provide about 2,000 meals through the mobile café.
For Daul, the $25,000 Gate City Bank gift was more than a budget line.
“It gave us a little more confidence as we went into 2026,” she said. “Fiscally, but then also knowing that our community was there supporting our mission.”
For Daul, the café’s mission has never been only about filling plates. It’s also about nourishing “body, heart and soul.”
“We all know how important it is to have a healthy meal so you can function,” Daul said. “But having those social connections and being around people, talking to people, sharing, being a part of community is just as important as a healthy meal.”
To help foster those connections, tables and chairs are set out, even when a food truck naturally suggests a grab-and-go meal, and dessert is always included.
“Dessert means that you care,” Daul said. “We want you to stick around.”
Sometimes, that invitation matters in ways no one can see at first. Daul remembers a woman who stopped by after her husband died, following the advice of a friend who’d told her there would be a place for her at Heart-n-Soul and she wouldn’t have to sit alone. Another local resident came to one of the early cafés and left a note behind, thanking them for the wonderful meal and admitting she typically gives something, but that night she had nothing to give.
“Whether you don't have anything to give financially or emotionally, sometimes everybody gets to that point,” Daul said. “We just want people to know they can come and eat with us, come and join a group of people that are typically pretty upbeat and happy and always welcoming.”
Chef and kitchen manager Joe Swegarden’s background includes popular, upscale Fargo restaurants, kitchens across the country and three years at Gramercy Tavern in New York City. But he said it’s been his time with Heart-n-Soul that changed what food means to him.
“It’s the community,” Swegarden said. “Heart-n-Soul has opened up a totally different world when it comes to community.”
He loves the creativity of working with donated produce, local ingredients and changing menus. But what keeps him there is the chance to see what a good meal can do for someone who’s struggling.
“All it takes is that one interaction with that person that’s having a really, really tough time and to hear what a meal does for them and their family,” he said. “This is what I’m here to do.”
At Heart-n-Soul’s community café, someone without much expendable income might try curry for the first time, taste a farmers market tomato at its peak and have an opportunity to choose from several options instead of being handed whatever’s available. Those choices matter.
“We are giving people more than just a meal,” he said. “We’re giving them what they need to have a happy life.”
Some people who can afford to pay for a meal worry that if they stop by the truck, they’ll be taking food from someone who needs it more. Swegarden stressed that because Heart-n-Soul is open to everyone, its survival depends on guests who can afford to pay, sometimes more than the cost of their own meal.
“We really depend on those people that can afford the food to come and pay it forward, so the person that comes next who can’t afford it can get a good meal and we can keep it going,” he said.
That balance varies from event to event. Daul said an event serving 150 to 200 guests can cost roughly $3,000 to $3,500 to operate, depending on food, labor and other expenses. Some days, they might serve hundreds of meals and receive only a small amount in donations. Other days, guests and supporters help make up the difference.
Food insecurity, Swegarden said, is often less visible than people assume.
“Food insecurity isn’t just the guy that you see walking on the street that looks like he’s struggling,” he said. “It could be that person you’re going to dinner with that is sitting across the table from you.”
At Heart-n-Soul, the answer is not to separate people by need, but to bring them together. A mother can bring her children to the food truck and have something to look forward to. A senior can sit down to a warm meal and conversation. A volunteer can chop onions, fold towels, pour lemonade or stay late to help clean up. A guest with nothing to give one week may return another time and pay more than the cost of their meal.
“We just want to serve people with dignity and respect,” Daul said. “It’s just meeting people where they’re at.”
The truest measure of Heart-n-Soul’s work after nearly a decade isn’t in the number of meals served but the number of people reminded that they matter.
“Knowing that we can provide a happy, positive, comfortable place for people,” Swegarden said, “that’s everything.”
At Gate City Bank, we’re honored to partner with Great Plains Food Bank. See how we’re helping improve food security in the region, while creating a better life for community members in need.
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No one should have to go hungry or experience food insecurity. Learn more about how we’re partnering with Emergency Food Pantry to provide hunger relief in our communities.
Since 2014, we’ve been honored to partner with Dakota Medical Foundation – donating countless volunteer hours and dollars to benefit local charities across North Dakota and Minnesota.
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