LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After facing challenge after challenge, one Louisville business owner is asking for the community’s help to keep their doors open.
That business is The Silly Axe Cafe, where every item is made with love by Chef Angela Pike.
“I was a personal chef for 10 years and what happened was that my job was making me sick,” Pike said. “Every day I was boiling pasta, people don’t realize that even inhaling pasta fumes that you don’t eat if your celiac can have health consequences to it.”
After Pike and her daughter were both diagnosed with celiac disease, that’s when she opened Silly Axe Cafe, the only gluten-free restaurant in Louisville that also is both nut-free and lactose-free. The cafe also can accommodate just about every food allergy.
Silly Axe Cafe opened in April 2019, just months before the pandemic hit. Pike was not prepared for the challenges that she would soon face.
“Our entire staff got COVID pretty much, which affected business tremendously obviously,” Pike recalled. “Then as soon as everyone got better, the very first day everyone was back, the pipes in the empty apartment froze and in the middle of a lunch rush, the entire ceiling started pouring water.”
Along with food and labor costs increasing, Pike is still trying to recover. That’s why she posted a GoFundMe page titled “Save Silly Axe Cafe.”
“I’ve almost given up and I think that this week I came the closest to it but this community has made me want to fight and while I thought it was the end, it’s possible it’s just the beginning,” Pike said.
The fundraiser has nearly twenty thousand dollars raised so far by dedicated customers like Martha Morgan.
“I can’t have MSG, I can’t have chocolate, I can’t have nitrates and she understands all of that so when I first came in here I was asking questions about gluten,” Morgan said. “There’s a language people don’t understand unless you live it, and she lives it.”
Customers that keep Angela Pike in the kitchen.
“That’s why I’m here. I mean, I wouldn’t do this otherwise. If I had been at a normal restaurant, I would have closed my doors by now because it wouldn’t have been worth it to me,” Pike said. “I’m actually helping people and I haven’t paid myself in over 6 months, not making money off this. It’s a labor of love.”
As she continues to create a safe place for those who struggle with the same food allergies.
