What if communities got together for breakfast?
Action Breakfast is an idea I’ve been exploring for bringing people together around something almost everyone understands: breakfast.
Imagine a place where people of all ages can gather in the morning, enjoy a meal, talk with neighbors, and discover opportunities to help one another.
A community breakfast could be much more than a place to eat. It could be a gathering place where people share ideas, make friends, help children with homework, organize recreational activities, and learn about resources available in their communities.
It could also be a place where people begin imagining ways to improve their towns and cities.
Making breakfast accessible
One of the central questions behind Action Breakfast is how communities might make nutritious breakfasts available to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay.
I’ve considered possibilities such as:
- Sliding-scale meal prices.
- Food donations and cooperation with food banks.
- Purchasing food collectively through consumer cooperatives.
- Buying ingredients from nearby farms and food producers.
- Working with community gardens.
- Preparing meals in existing kitchens and public facilities.
- Creating neighborhood food pantries that help households beyond breakfast.
The idea is not that everyone must participate in the same way. Different communities have different resources, facilities, cultures, and needs.
A neighborhood in a large city might organize Action Breakfast differently from a small rural town.
And a community might begin with breakfast once or twice a week before exploring whether daily gatherings are practical.
The importance of transportation
Having a place to gather doesn’t automatically mean everyone can get there.
Some people don’t drive. Others may live far from suitable gathering places or have difficulty arranging transportation.
An Action Breakfast project could explore transportation arrangements that make participation easier, particularly for people who might otherwise be isolated.
That might mean examining existing transportation services, community ridesharing arrangements, or other locally appropriate possibilities.
Transportation could be an important part of the idea rather than an afterthought.
Learning, recreation, and cooperation
I also imagine Action Breakfast as a setting where people can enjoy activities beyond eating.
Children might receive help with schoolwork. Neighbors might discuss their hobbies. People could share information about community events, gardens, libraries, recreational opportunities, and projects they’re interested in.
Some participants might want to explore housing cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, or other ways of meeting community needs.
Others might simply want breakfast and some friendly conversation.
Both are perfectly good reasons to attend.
Action Breakfast doesn’t need to turn everyone into an organizer, volunteer, or entrepreneur. The breakfast itself—and the opportunity to spend time together—has value.
Could this work in many communities?
One possibility I’ve explored is documenting how an individual community could develop its own Action Breakfast.
That raises practical questions:
- How many people might attend?
- What facilities are already available?
- How much food would be needed?
- What would meals cost?
- Could local farms, stores, gardens, and food banks participate?
- How could transportation be arranged?
- Who would coordinate the activities?
- How could the breakfast remain financially sustainable without making profit its purpose?
These are questions worth researching, not problems that should be assumed to have easy answers.
In December 2025, I was particularly interested in Minnesota and the possibility of exploring Action Breakfast in smaller communities.
I also considered producing videos about how a community breakfast could work, with different places developing their own approaches rather than following one rigid model.
Action Breakfast as an ongoing idea
For JR24JENSEN, Action Breakfast is an idea I’ll continue exploring through research, writing, videos, and conversations.
I own ActionBreakfast.com, a domain I acquired while developing the concept in 2025.
This permanent Action Breakfast page provides a place to organize the idea as it develops. Current posts can document new research, questions, videos, and developments over time.
I’m exploring this as a personal hobby, sharing ideas that other people and communities might find interesting.
— Jesse Ryan Jensen
Related Current post: Action Breakfast: A Community Breakfast Idea.