Dawn – Here is my concept motivating your portrait. We’ll photograph you interacting with Chief Martineau (whom I have not yet invited to participate) at The Pauper’s Pantry. The actual shot will be improvised on-set, but you could walk by, serve him, share a meal, or do anything that animates the setup.
Below is my 500-word write-up from our conversation for your review. I can’t make it longer, but it has to be correct and you have to be comfortable with whatever we put out there. I found your story to be inspirational. I hope I am treating it respectfully, and I don’t want to do anything that will interfere with your business. But I believe if we can tell this story, then it will give hope to other people facing personal challenges.
Ricardo (215) 269-1114
Dawn Write-Up
Draft 3/8/25
Dawn Aker-Ayala is thriving. She owns The Pauper’s Pantry restaurant on Main Street and partners with Kim Kay in the catering service Finicky Fork. Both businesses receive rave reviews. The Pauper’s Pantry has a mere 36 seats, which she designed for comfort. Dawn wants her patrons to linger. “It is an honor for me to put my food on your table,” she tells me.
This restaurant is her gift to Fitchburg; Finicky Fork usurps most of her attention. The Pauper’s Pantry kitchen is shared with Finicky Fork and can run 24-7 in the busy season. She manages a well-paid staff of some 20 employees, not including per diem servers, and navigates an incoming tide of client emails and conversations. “Finicky Fork will cater 4 or 5 parties before noon on a Monday. We may plate over 700 dinners on Saturdays,” Dawn tells me when I visit. “I’m engaged in another 80 to 100 ongoing conversations for future events right now.” Then, with an exasperated smile, she adds, “And more come every day.”
Dawn is proud of her successes. She is also candid that her achievements did not come easily, nor did she succeed alone. Dawn shares her story to support other people facing personal challenges. She left home at 15, struggled with addiction, became a single mother, and, bleeding from a knife attack, “was scraped off of the ground” by a rookie Fitchburg cop named Ernest Martineau. “I was trying to get my life together and people circled around me like a ball to protect me. They carried me through different seasons of my life.” She got clean at 23, has been happily married for decades, and is a doting mimi to two grandkids.
On the eve of Covid’s forced restaurant closures, Dawn “took out extreme lines of credit and quadrupled previous orders” from her suppliers. She sent her staff home with food “so they could at least feed their families. And then I still had $20,000 worth of food to sell.” So she partnered with a local brewery, and the two set up a curbside take-out restaurant. “Cars lined up on Boulder Drive. They might pick up a six-pack from the brewery and call ahead to our barbeque tent just down the block. They’d roll down their car window, we’d pass them their chicken, and they’d drive away.” Dawn showed me a photograph documenting this appetite-induced traffic jam.
Like many other setbacks Dawn Aker-Ayala has faced, COVID set the table for unexpected blessings. More people tasted her cooking than might ever have passed through The Pauper’s Pantry door, and they have since become repeat customers. This partly explains her two businesses’ success. Her drive, commitment, passion, and agency are also huge factors. And, underneath it all is community support. “I started with a pot and a ladle,” Dawn likes to say. Now it is we who are blessed, for Dawn provisions our community’s feasts.