<\/p>\n
What started as a woman feeling called to cook breakfast for a handful of friends has turned into a dispute over food, faith, and government regulations.<\/p>\n
Kathy Kite, a resident of Harrisburg, Missouri, began welcoming locals into her home for breakfast back in May after the community\u2019s convenience store stopped serving breakfast following COVID.<\/p>\n
Kite works at H-Town, the local convenience store and gas station, and said residents had repeatedly expressed interest in finding a new place to have breakfast. She lives nearby, so she decided to offer an alternative by cooking for her friends and offering up the food for free.<\/p>\n
Listen to the latest\u00a0episode\u00a0of \u201cQuick Start\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI told the old guys that come in there in the mornings that like to play cards, and drink coffee, and eat breakfast, and say they didn\u2019t have any more \u2014 I\u2019m like, \u2018You guys can come to my house and I\u2019ll do it,\u2019\u201d Kite told CBN News.<\/p>\n So, she started offering breakfast out of her kitchen and people came.<\/p>\n \u201cIt all started with just some like sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits,\u201d Kite said.<\/p>\n At first, it was just a few people. But others soon began to come after her loving act was advertised on social media, with 20-25 people regularly coming to her home in the morning; some parents even brought their kids to her house for food before school. Kite gets up at 3:30 a.m. to prepare for the day.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it just kind of exploded from there,\u201d Kite said. \u201cSo then people were like, \u2018Breakfast? We have breakfast in town?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Kite doesn\u2019t charge for the meals. There is a place for people to leave money if they choose, but she said those contributions go back into buying ingredients and food.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a moneymaker by any means,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n For Kite, feeding people is also deeply connected to her Christian faith.<\/p>\n \u201cFor whatever reason, God has put it in my heart that I need to take care of people,\u201d she said. \u201cI like to feed people.\u201d<\/p>\n Kite continued, \u201cIn my mind feeding people is loving people.\u201d<\/p>\n But Kite\u2019s breakfast gatherings eventually caught the attention of government officials, with Columbia city officials from the Columbia\/Boone County Public Health and Human Services Department reportedly sending a letter telling her she needed a commercial kitchen license to continue operating.<\/p>\n Kite disputes that she is operating a business, though, and said the government\u2019s demands have broken her heart.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not running a business,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is just friends coming over for breakfast. It\u2019s no different than a backyard barbecue or a church gathering.\u201d<\/p>\n Kite said the warning dramatically affected attendance, as some residents became concerned that continuing to visit could cause additional trouble for her. As a result, many stopped coming.<\/p>\n \u201cI went from having probably 20 to 25 to maybe 5 to 8 people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Still, Kite isn\u2019t planning to stop, despite admitting she was scared to incur fines or worse. Rather than back down, she sought legal help and has no plans to stop.<\/p>\n \u201cGod laid this on me and I just feel like if God brought me to it, God\u2019s going to bring me through it,\u201d Kite said. \u201cI believe in what I\u2019m doing. I don\u2019t believe I\u2019m doing anything wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n The Goldwater Institute is helping Kite and has sent a letter to the Boone County health department seeking answers about why they are demanding a commercial kitchen. Officials with the Columbia\/Boone County Public Health and Human Services Department\u00a0told Fox News\u00a0that Kite has a tip jar, open sign, and is advertising food on social media, indicating elements \u201cassociated with a food establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo citations or cease-and-desist orders were issued. We also did not threaten jail time,\u201d the statement\u00a0read. \u201cWe sent a letter to Ms. Kite following a complaint we received that food served in her establishment made someone ill. Our role in public health is to work with food establishments to promote safe food practices and prevent food-borne illnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n The text continued, \u201cThere are safe, allowable ways to provide homemade food to the community with and without a food permit. We regularly work together with individuals and businesses who want to provide free food to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Please sign up for\u00a0Faithwire\u2019s daily newsletter\u00a0and download the\u00a0CBN News app\u00a0to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What started as a woman feeling called to cook breakfast for a handful of friends has turned into a dispute over food, faith, and government regulations. Kathy Kite, a resident of Harrisburg, Missouri, began welcoming locals into her home for breakfast back in May after the community\u2019s convenience store stopped serving breakfast following COVID. Kite<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[72,356,3505,10014,210,10656,3071,963],"class_list":["post-31974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-christian","tag-community","tag-demands","tag-feeding","tag-government","tag-grandma","tag-refuses","tag-stop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}