Established 10,000 BCE. Founded 2023.
Since 10,000 BCE, people have built bridges over shared meals. Founded at Rollins College in 2023, Breaking Bread uses food diplomacy and facilitated dinner dialogues to bring people together.
An academic question became a community. One table became many.
We don’t all have to agree by dessert.
We just have to be willing to sit together at the table.
The Breaking Bread Recipe
Our evidence-backed, four-step model is the secret sauce behind every Breaking Bread gathering — proven across every table we’ve set.
Setting the Table
Every gathering begins with people arriving. We start with introductions, informal conversations, and of course, gathering around a table for a shared meal.
First Course
The opening is intentionally light and the questions and prompts are designed to connect the guests to one another. They touch on the topic but in unifying ways. That allows the topic to enter before the disagreement about it.
Main Meal
Once people have eaten together and learned about one another, the conversation moves to where they legitimately differ. The facilitation keeps it constructive and ensures that everyone can participate.
Dessert Discourse
We close out the gathering by table-wide and group-wide reflections on what we heard, what we still believe, and what we may be more willing to understand.
We will eat again.
The secret recipe here is repetition that forms relationships. A one-off gathering can be a useful tool, but a series of Breaking Bread meals can turn strangers into colleagues and ideological opponents into friends.
Interested in bringing the Breaking Bread Experience to your organization? →
Where Breaking Bread Began
Breaking Bread began with an academic question about the role food plays in helping to settle religious conflicts. Student-faculty collaborative research resulted in a presentation to the Parliament of the World’s Religions and subsequent publication in the Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Food.
Our founder believed this idea could go further: that food could bridge divides and create community. He started Breaking Bread in fall 2023 at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. In two weeks, it became the fastest-growing student organization at the school.
People showed up to the Monthly Eatings and Dinner Discourses. More importantly, people returned to engage with those of different backgrounds and beliefs.
One table became many.
Drawing on his Moroccan-Jewish heritage and experience in campus and community leadership, Joseph founded Breaking Bread around something he had experienced firsthand: some of our hardest conversations become easier when we first have a reason to sit down together.
One Table Became Many
Where we set the table.
Dinner Discourses. Interfaith and intercultural events. Monthly Eatings. One of Rollins’ fastest-growing student organizations.
Where our movement spread.
From a small liberal arts college to one of America’s largest universities. UCF proved people everywhere were hungry for dialogue.
Where we needed more chairs.
Invited to lead Breaking Bread’s largest-ever program. 400 young leaders dined and dialogued together at the leadership conference.
Breaking Bread is growing. What started as a student organization is becoming an independent organization built to help campuses, communities, and organizations bring dialogue (and dinner) across difference to their own tables.
Grab a Seat
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