Price is right at pay-what-you-can restaurant
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The lunch began with a turkey sandwich topped by pepper jack cheese and chipotle mayonnaise on homemade flat bread. On the side, cashews topped a salad of broccoli, celery, grapes, apples, and dried cranberries with a cool glass of iced tea.
Any other day, that meal would cost $11.82. But Wednesday is "Pay What You Can Day" at Harvest Coffee & Cafe, a Shelbyville eatery tucked inside a Main Street antique mall.
As a result, Cheri Hamilton scooped a handful of quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies from the bottom of her purse into a silver bucket next to the cash register.
"I gave them all the change I had," said Hamilton, who lives with her dad, earns $8.25 selling shoes part time at the mall and struggles with a weight problem. Besides being affordable, the restaurant is helping her eat nutritious meals instead of dollar items at fast food outlets, she said.
"It is hard to eat healthy food for cheap," Hamilton said. "The first time I came here, I couldn't believe it. My faith in humanity was restored that day."
Asked how it works, cashier Sarah Funnell said, "Wednesday is a day for us to level the playing field in Shelby County to say that whoever wants to come and eat a healthy, good-quality meal can do so for whatever they are able to pay."
Generosity like this can be found in the expanding ranks of so-called "community cafes," including one planned in Louisville this fall and two others in the works in small Kentucky towns besides Shelbyville.
Some 52 similar restaurants already operate in the U.S. and abroad, according to the nonprofit One World Everybody Eats. They include One Bistro near Dayton, Ohio, whose website states "a seat is waiting if you're hungry, or if you have a hunger to help our neighbors."
Elsewhere, two New Jersey "Soul Kitchen Community Restaurants" sponsored by musician Jon Bon Jovi just celebrated three years in business. And Panera Cares Community Cafes reap up to 75% of the regular retail cost of food at four locations including suburbs outside St. Louis and Detroit, according to the Panera website.
In Louisville, socially responsible dining is expected to arrive this fall in the Portland neighborhood at The Table, a lunch stop where diners will be able to bus tables, prep food or sweep floors in trade for a meal. Customers can also pay whatever they can afford, executive director John S. Howard said.
"We want a place where everybody can feel welcome to come in and have a meal, regardless of whether they pay with your time, or pay with a dollar," he said. "We want to build community and solve the issues of food insecurity in a dignified way."
But some such outlets don't last. The Green Door in downtown Corydon, Ind., which opened in 2011, closed abruptly in 2013. Green Door owner Desiree Thayer could not be reached for comment, and former chef Jesse Badger, who left six months before the restaurant closed, said he did not know why that eatery did not endure. In a 2012 Courier-Journal article, Thayer said she was making ends meet.
In Shelbyville, the Harvest Coffee & Cafe was opened last summer by Ben and Melinda Hardin, natives of the city.
Melinda Hardin is a former pharmaceutical saleswoman and two-pack-a-day smoker who transformed her life through exercise and nutrition. From a menu briefly focused on gluten-free and vegan foods, the restaurant has since grown to offer daily lunches with meat, like grass-fed beef or chicken from Shelby County family farms, chef Bill Walters said.
What makes it work is that some customers give more instead of less.
For her turkey sandwich and vegetable fruit salad Wednesday worth $11.82, receptionist Cynda Lewis, 54, dropped $14 in the bucket. That helped level the toll from lunch last month, Lewis said, when she had only $5 to give. On a visit from Portland, Ore., tourist Ladawn Reid dropped $30 in the bucket, more than retail for three sandwiches for herself, her husband and son.
A progressive cafe more commonly found in liberal cities like Seattle or Boston is possible in Shelbyville, some say, because of the influx of newcomers in recent years. Shelbyville is an affordable Louisville exurb accessible on Interstate 64. New residents have powered a 46% growth in the city's population since 2000, to a total of 14,761 people in 2013.
To keep the cafe afloat, Melissa Hardin said she still works as a part-time fitness instructor and private nutrition and health coach.
Besides the daily lunch trade, Harvest has expanded to offer monthly farm-to-table dinners that attract some 40 people for $40 each.
Walters said the restaurant's success "will not happen overnight," referring to the shift from vegan eats to more traditional fare enlivened by fresh local eggs, poultry, vegetables and other meats.
"I am trying to plug holes and shift gears," he said. "It will come around."