This Texas nonprofit is creating community.
The driving force that eventually led to the establishment of nonprofit Hugs Café in downtown McKinney, Texas, began nearly 20 years ago in Parker, Colorado, where founder Ruth Thompson worked at a respite center organizing evening programming for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). For Ruth, it sparked a passion for working with individuals with IDD, an experience she brought with her when her husband’s job in insurance risk management meant a move for their family to Texas in 2008. She would eventually find employment as a cooking school manager at a local grocery, teaching cooking initially for stay-at-home moms and then adults with disabilities.
A Vision Brought to Life
In a conversation with newly minted Hugs Café CEO Lauren Smith, who started as a Hugs volunteer nine years ago and then served as Hugs Café executive director for five years, she delved not only into the story behind Ruth’s vision, Hugs and its staff (80% of which are people with IDD) but also into how the nonprofit is scaling its unique operations and business model.
“She started a cooking class for adults with disabilities, with a couple of individuals in her class,” Smith says about Ruth’s time at the Market Street grocery store. “Word of mouth spread from families. They were looking for ways to get out in the community and do something, and a cooking class designed just for individuals with IDD, and even potentially some physical limitations, was a golden ticket opportunity. Very quickly, it turned to 100 individuals a month. … It was about three years down the line. Ruth had a dream two nights in a row of a restaurant that trained and employed adults with disabilities. She mentioned it to her husband. They were getting ready to retire and he said, ‘Well, we’ve got to do that.’”
Neither Ruth nor her husband had any experience running a restaurant, but it didn’t stop them from raising $8,000 to start in 2013 to bring the dream to life. It wasn’t quite enough to build or renovate a space for the café, but they found a fellow church member who had a building up for rent in downtown McKinney. This lucky find, plus another six months of raising an additional $150,000, allowed the couple to eventually open Hugs Café on October 13, 2015.
The nonprofit specializes in social enterprises as well as culinary and hospitality training in addition to the cafes, greenhouse and Hugs Training Academy it runs.
“I came into the picture just a little bit later in 2017,” says Smith about her start as a volunteer at the restaurant. “But for that very first beginning, it was Ruth and a small community of individuals that had loved ones with disabilities. Again, people that were just in her circle. Our mayor at that time threw a concert to help be a part of the fundraising. There’s been picking up and helping along the way.”
Branching Out
Hugs Café is not just a restaurant with drinks, food and friendly faces — the business employs 100 people and includes staff offices, a greenhouse that grows flowers and bedding plants for sale and the 13,000-sq.-ft. Hugs Training Academy, which provides culinary and hospitality training for its employees in the form of a 12-week in-person vocational model. The training has also worked well for customer service and administrative roles at Hugs. Smith noted how local company Encore Wire, which frequently hosts building tours and staff birthdays (the manufacturer employs over 2,000 employees), hired a Hugs Café staff member to manage and organize company events after she designed their company holiday card.
“It’s really wonderful to see that growth, but the minute she got that job her first question was, ‘Can I still keep my one day a week at Hugs? Like, do I have to leave Hugs? Or can I stay?’ And of course, we don’t want anyone to feel like their time is up,” recalls Smith about the employee’s professional success. “People can grow and expand as they would want to, right? We want to continue to professionally develop everyone. But when those moments happen, and we’re able to transfer someone from a culinary and hospitality world and just recognize that showing up to work on time, having a good attitude, being part of a team, being a good listener — that’s 90% of a job. And the skills that people are able to do on top of that, too. Our team is just really transferable. So culinary and hospitality was the start, but it’s by no means the end.”
Growth is central to the mission and history of Hugs Café. The organization recently opened a second restaurant in Dallas, open six days a week and serving up a menu of food options mostly made from scratch. Thanks to the Meadows Foundation, the Hugs Café location in Dallas will not have to pay rent. The Hugs Café Training Academy has also partnered with Dallas College as part of its northern Texas expansion.
“We started a 2023-to-2028 strategic plan,” Smith replies when asked if there are plans to expand the organization’s reach and set up shop in other locations. “And in that, we knew we wanted to be sustainable as well as have a model that we knew was scalable. So, our goal by 2028 was to employ 100 people with disabilities and to be poised to be a national model and to have regional operation.” After listing the expansions Hugs Café has made over the years, she notes that “in all of that, we achieved everything that our 2028 strategic plan was going to accomplish. So, everything’s kind of come full circle two-and-a-half years ahead of schedule.”
The sky is the limit when it comes to Hugs and its people. With the help of donors and astute business strategy, the organization has grown to celebrate 10 years of operating its McKinney location, licenses its training academy curriculum offerings and mentors other nonprofits outside of Texas.
“There are plans for other Hugs Cafés, but it is going to be a bit of a race to see what goes first. Will it be a partner in another state where we license our model? Or will it be something in driving distance to McKinney and Dallas?”
— Lauren Smith, Hugs Café CEO
“To say what’s on the horizon, we know that we have now replicated a second restaurant to have impact, be important to the community and be something that can sustain,” Smith says. “And our goal is now to continue to do that. There are plans for other Hugs Cafés, but it is going to be a bit of a race to see what goes first. Will it be a partner in another state where we license our model? Or will it be something in driving distance to McKinney and Dallas? I don’t know, but both are something we are pursuing. It’s just a question of resources. The Dallas café was able to happen so quickly because we were given a building rent free, as well as significant contributions to fund the renovation of the building itself. So should an opportunity like that present itself with a strong partner, such as the Meadows Foundation, then, who knows? We might take that plan, and again, accelerate it at twice the impact that we were able to do with this first strategic plan, but I would say, yes — a handful more of self-operating cafés and then we want to share the model.”
The Dallas Hugs Café location received a six-figure donation from the private family-owned Meadows Foundation based in the same city, allowing for renovations of the building. Smith hopes this serves as a model and launch pad for other foundations to follow suit, considering the results the nonprofit has seen with its new expansion already.
Hugs Café opened its second restaurant in early December 2025, located in the heart of Dallas, Texas.
“Because of this regional impact that we have, our donor bases are larger, our foundation ask can be larger, and we have some of those foundations now supporting our work in Collin County, as well as Dallas County, and we wouldn’t have had that without the investment that Meadows made,” Smith says. “They made it first, and they made it fast, and both of those things are really awesome. Their president [Peter Miller] that said yes to this retired at the end of this year, and he and I still exchange emails and articles. He’s a dear friend, a friend for life. And I just can’t think him enough that he not only took employing people with disabilities seriously, but he made a huge investment with a direct asset that the Meadows Foundation has and entrusts us to manage and to elevate it. It’s just been the craziest 15 months of our life, but we would absolutely do it all over again. And to be honest, that’s the plan.”
Hugs Café also broke ground on a new McKinney-based headquarters and training academy in 2025, with project developer KDC, that is planned to be operational in 2026. The impact of the organization on its employees and Smith’s life has been immeasurable, leading one worker to pursue studies in nonprofit management. Another worker accompanied Smith on a Tulsa fundraising trip, helping secure a seven-figure donation for Hugs Café.
As we wrapped up our call, which took place the day before New Year’s Eve, Smith reminisced on her happiest memory in the café — a marriage proposal.
“My husband proposed in front of the soda machine,” she told me with a smile. “It was like the most beautiful part of my life. And I fell in love when I fell in love with the work. It was just super wonderful. Our staff got to see me go from volunteer to development and helping build the team and supporting the board and now growing what we hope to be a nationally sustainable nonprofit that is a model for inclusive hiring and diverse talent across the country, especially through culinary and hospitality models.”