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I love Utne Reader magazine and highly recommend it as a Christmas gift. I came across an article in the most recent issue and it seems so… I don’t know… “Charlottesville”… in a good way. A link is below, but here is a summary if you have actual work to be doing on this Thursday (unlike me):
Pay-what-you-can (PWYC) restaurants are slowly creeping into the viable restaurant world. Far from soup kitchens, they usually offer cafeteria-style servings of mostly locally-grown and/or organic foods. The idea is that patrons, setting their own portions, will waste less. They also pay what they deem to be a fair price. According to the owner of a Salt Lake City-based PWYC restaurant, it averages out to be the going rate for similar items. At her PWYC place, volunteers make up some of the help and recieve a free meal voucher for every hour served. They can use it themselves or give it to someone else who might need it more. According to the restaurants website, they pay all employees a living wage and in a business sector where 2 in 3 restaurants dont live to see their first birthday, they are well into year 4 with a 5% profit margin, the average for American restaurants.
Here is the entire article (whose awesomeness I have not nearly replicated):
Here is the website of the foundation the Salt Lake City restraurateur started to help others follow her model:
Could a local/organic foods-centric, pay-what-you-can restaurant survive here? I’m thinking specifically on the downtown mall for the lunch crowd? Discuss.
(Dan from Eppies, I apologize in advance for promoting ideas that infringe on your territory.)
Popularity: 5% [?]
Tagged as: Downtown Mall, Local Business, Restaurants, Trends
Lets have a day of pay what you can in December and test it out! It would be a fun Christmastime “gift” of sorts! I know there are folks on here from many of the downtown spots……Eppies, OXO, BRCS, Kiki, DT Grill, Bizou, etc….Just a thought!
I’d sort of like a Restaurant Week, like they have in some of the larger cities. Really, would only hit the more expensive places in town, but it could be interesting. In NYC, they have Restaurant Week twice a year. At the one in July, a number of fine dining establishments offered a three-course lunch for $24.07 (with some even offering a full dinner for $35). Sure, that’s a pricey lunch, for C-ville. But not at one of the better restaurants in NYC. It offers a way to try upscale places on a more reasonable budget. Adjusted for local pricing on local menus, could be a lot of fun! Personally, I’ll admit to not having had a full meal at OXO since it first opened, AGES back. Since I haven’t eaten there recently, I don’t personally recommend the place; I don’t speak against it, I just simply feel I can’t offer an opinion one way or the other. If I had the opportunity to try a meal more within my budget, I could at least speak to the quality of the food, when asked for recommendations. Or, perhaps (being more knowledgable, after such a meal), I’d be willing to spring for the higher price myself, for special occasions. Sort of OT, but just a thought I’ve had in the odd moment, thinking about the restaurant scene in C-ville. Again, guess this would only hit a limited number of places, but it’s a thought.
And when the denizens of Friendship Court hear and bomb you out who picks up the losses?
So price it at $20 for a 3-course lunch…
ThatGrrl, it’s going to happen…
Oooo. Very interesting, lilith. I’ll be watching for that. Thanks!
No worries on infringement indie.
There’s lots of great restaurants downtown, but we could always use more (I’m in favor of more good food).
I’ve got a lot of thoughts on the PWYC/PWYW issue. Mostly just b/c I’m not sure what I think about it. Like everything that’s not obvious, there’s good points on both sides. I’ll post some thoughts if I have time, but for now, my knee-jerk questions are:
1) Is it more pay what you can / pay what you want / or pay what you think is fair?
2) Under this type scenario, do you think you’d always pay the same price for the same item, or is it more just how you felt that day?
3) How impacted do you think you’d be by other people’s perceptions of what you paid, and/or how pressured would you feel by what other customers paid and / or the establishment in general.
I’m sure lots of similar questions surround this idea, but it’s interesting.
So is the idea of a local restaurant week. Can’t believe we don’t have that already. Maybe something’ll happen there.
Adios.
dan, im far from knowledgeable when it comes to the restaurant business, but my impression from reading the article (which i highly recommend) is that it is more of a pay what you want/what you think is fair model. i also get the impression that there is a box by the door for people, on the honor code, to drop their money rather anonymously on the way out. that leads me to believe that amount id pay would vary from day to day. the restaurant in utah is cafeteria style, so i might get a small bowl of jambalaya one day and a huge plate of it the next. theoretically id give a bit more the 2nd day. the article quoted the woman as saying, “that while she’s occasionally had to admonish people who try to take advantage of the system, most patrons leave their fair share—and then some.” also, i think if the humanitarian aspect was played up, or even somehow have the profits go to a local non-profit, better-off people would be willing to pay a little extra to cover the less fortunate. theyd think of it as a subtle donation to the salvation army or something. maybe thats a painfully naive assessment of human nature, but somehow its been made viable by some smart businesspeople. i dont claim to be one of them.
I think I’m always skeptical of others’ decisions regarding “fair” pricing. Look at the Radiohead example. Though not entirely analogous, Forbes reported that 62% of all In Rainbows downloaders opted to pay nothing for the album. 16% of individuals who elected to pay $8 or more accounted for 79% of all album revenue. That doesn’t bode well for the concept of individual fair price appraisals.
Radiohead earns royalties off radioplay, album sales, and merchandising. The new album release is a potential watershed event for ticket sales. Restaurants don’t have the same luxury. If I were operating a business with such thin margins, I’d make damn sure that all my patrons were paying a fair price by setting that price myself.
Clearly, the referenced article suggests that this PWYC model is sustainable, but I wonder how portable it is to different markets. I guess I always default to the notion that folks feel entitled to anything that has no standard (or explicitly marked) value.
I love the idea that hungry people get to eat too but this article mentions a cafeteria-style restaurant. Last I checked, C-ville doesn’t have any of those. Would be cool though. Like back in high-school but if the food were actually good.
Don’t believe any “reports” of what Radiohead sold, please. No one - let me repeat - no one knows what Radiohead did because it was their own website and they have chosen not to report it. Forbes is relying on data from a company that makes money estimating web site hits and e-commerce sales. It’s pure speculation.
Any “data” you see about Radiohead is false. I am chagrined that this “data” is making the rounds as factual. Just like the woman in the McDonald’s hot coffee case……don’t believe what you hear.
Sorry BusRider, don’t mean to burst your bubble here, but while your point may be valid, the data and analogy is f.a.l.s.e.
Samantha,
Neither you nor I were present at the sales figure calculation, so I can only rely on a pretty decent business news mag for my info. Information has a funny way of getting out. And customers talk.
I’ll assume for a moment that you’re not completely full of shit. Are these numbers questionable? Maybe. It really doesn’t matter for the purposes of my argument. Think about the illegal music downloading phenom. (I’m not getting moralistic here; Lord knows I’ve done my fair share.) It’s a great example of people taking advantage of product whose monetary value is removed from the product itself. Whether it’s Radiohead “purchased” for free or Radiohead stolen through Napster, the outcome, really, is the same. The point is, human behavior is pretty predictable.
Even good people like freebies, Samantha. If you’re running a business and expect to make money, it’s a pretty risky gamble to assume that your customers will have the same perception of monetary value as you. Nobody walking in the door of a restaurant–save restauranteurs–has any idea of what their food should cost. They can “comparison shop” at best, but they don’t know what price point will make the owner marginally profitable.
Guess no one noticed that Danpri’s comment was REALLY fucked up.
I don’t even know where to start.
{(POP)} …. OWWWWWWW…. there goes my first post cherry.
Here is a true story…
Back in England there was a ‘PAY WHAT IT’S WORTH’ Indian Curry House that one of my mates used to frequent every Friday night after the pubs turfed out. A crew of them used to roll up there completely trollied and order a ton of food and then pay nothing. They were welcomed every week with genuine smiles and open arms because the Indian caste that the owners/workers originated from had some bizarre belief that all people are good and fair which meant the Friday night drunken pigs must be displeased with the quality of the food because otherwise they would pay.
One week they turned up and tried the usual stunt only to find out too late that the place was under new management and as they all left without paying the whole kitchen staff came out the back door and kicked their asses. Seems that some Indian castes are not as placid as others.
Oh crap… I just realised I didn’t come… will it be better the second time or is that it?
Floozy, SUP. That was super creative. We likey.
No real judgement on Radiohead’s release of “In Rainbows” can be made until the CD is released. I downloaded it, but am not going to pay anything for a lossy-compression MP3. If I like the album (only listened to it a couple of times so far), I’ll buy the CD when it’s released and rip it in a lossless format, then sit snug, fat and happy in my pseudo-audiophile smugness…
Also, given that the release of the album had no distro costs (CD pressing, packaging, shipping, store placement costs, retailers taking their cuts, etc.) outside of bandwidth, everything they made on the website went directly to the band - they’d have had to have probably 10 times the “sales” in the stores to equal what they made online. They’re not hurting, trust me. I’m sure many bands are taking note…
I have no doubt Radiohead isn’t suffering. But it’s still a pretty interesting experiment in human behavior. Sure, audiophiles will still buy the CD (or not…pretty weak album, actually), but the point is, they’ll buy it at a price that has been set for them. Ask someone to decide the value of a CD, and I’d bet the house on the assumption that they’ll come up with a value significantly below $16.99.
Wow, only one response to Danpri and his whacked comment. Charlottesville is in need of getting outside its awful self. I can understand keeping it light about this subject, but Friendship Court IS DOWNTOWN and those folks are not ALL bad people, Just like all the “cool kids” here arent all GOOD people. OBVIOUSLY
Danpri says shit all the time…
Remember that time he said we were not allowed to express our outrage over the McGowan murder because we talk about drinking and dancing and don’t do community outreach stuff all the time like him?
You da best Sha nay nay! Love you, your art, and your beautiful self!