When customers at One World Cafe in Utah finish eating their meal, they never ask the waiter for the check. In fact, owner Denise Cerreta never asked them to pay. “I asked for donations,” says the 59-year old former acupuncture therapist who opened the small organic soup and sandwich shop in Salt Lake City in 2003. “I think that charging a set price usually means serving a set portion and much food is wasted in this method.”
Relying on the honor system, the cafe allows customers to pay whatever they can (or want) by dropping cash into an unlocked donation box on the kitchen counter or volunteering for a plate of food where customers can stop in or schedule one hour time slots for every meal. Volunteer categories range from sewing to maintenance, yardwork to dishwashing.
If the menu had prices, the range would be anywhere from $1 to $8, depending on the plate size. Paying nothing was more than OK, too. “It is important to understand that everyone could use the complimentary dish of the day with no expectations from the kitchen of exchange,” says Cerreta, pointing out that customers had to get over the stigma of getting free food. “It’s funny that most people at first visualize a homeless person benefiting from the community kitchens. They do, but many people look just like me. Perhaps they are students, newly divorced, single parents, unemployed.”
The concept behind Cerreta letting people price their own meal is to help people value food as a catalyst for healthy relationships and communities, not just products for consumption. And it has worked — volunteering to bring out the best in people has been contagious over the years. When her rice cooker burned out, a customer volunteered to fix it. The landlord lets her set her own rent. A gardener uses extra seeds to plant a spice garden in the back of the cafe.
Seven years later, her vision is catching on around the world, from Denver to Highland Park, N.J. to Arlington, Texas to Vienna. In fact, she got so many phone calls from start-ups that she created a foundation called One World Everyone Eats to help others adopt a volunteer restaurant.
In May, Panera Bread opened a pay-what-you-can restaurant in a St. Louis suburb. There are no prices on the menu at Terra Bite Lounge, a coffee shop in Kirkland, Wash. Cerreta moved to Denver for about a month to help start up SAME (So All May Eat) Cafe, a 17-seat not-for-profit eatery with items on the menu including Greek salad, couscous and pizza. “Kostet… was ihr wollt!” (translated “Pay as you wish”) is written on the restaurant window at Der Wiener Deewan in Vienna. Each owner shares a desire to connect to the community through food, allowing people to donate time or money.
“I hope [One World Cafe] helped fertilize the seed to spark someone to open their hearts and reach out to help someone else in their lifetime in whatever way is theirs,” says Cerreta, who now works full time at the foundation (she sold the cafe with an agreement that it would keep the vision), adding that she is now advising yoga instructors and massage therapists.