Such a Thing as a Free Lunch

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This article is published in partnership with The Food Section.

Flip a rattler. Punk and gut. Soup kitchen.

Most century-old slang terms have slipped out of the standard American vernacular, but “soup kitchen” is holding strong, even though it’s the rare meal center that ladles hot slop these days. More commonly, charitable food providers give clients their pick of vegetarian brunch items or offer them dishes they might make if they had full kitchens and time to spend in them, such as gumbo or tamales.

Yet the belief persists that hunger relief organizations are operating under outdated models which deride dignity and limit choice, and it’s a driving force in the pay-what-you-can restaurant movement. 

Since the nonprofit dining model took shape about 20 years ago, it’s gained a sturdy foothold in the South. The region is home to about one-third of the 14 venues affiliated with One World Everybody Eats (OWEE), a national consortium of cafes without set prices, including new pay-what-you-can restaurants planned for New Orleans and Pittsboro. Industry experts estimate there are dozens more independent venues nationwide relying on a combination of charitable donations and customer payments to underwrite luncheonettes where patrons can choose to forgo all or part of the tab, although about the same number have come and gone since the concept got buzzy.

“What’s great about pay-what-you-can is it makes folks feel normal,” said Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC spokeswoman Jennifer M. Caslin, hailing OWEE member A Place at the Table, the downtown Raleigh café opened in 2017. 

Pay-what-you-can advocates credit the format with giving an emotional boost to participants, whether they’re troubled by paychecks that don’t cover their grocery bills or cultural divisions in their hometowns. In a phone interview, OWEE board president Julie Williams said the highlight of her previous day’s shift at Taste Community Restaurant in Fort Worth came during a hot and busy lunch hour, when “I’m mid-step, trying to seat someone, and this little boy runs up to me and gives me the biggest hug.”

Good feelings aside, though, it’s unclear whether pay-what-you-can restaurants are making any quantifiable headway on their twin goals of reducing hunger and enhancing community. Skepticism about the arrangement is almost as old as the idea itself—when the Southern Foodways Alliance’s podcast in 2019 profiled F.A.R.M Café in Boone, host John T. Edge commented, “I can’t help but recognize the theatricality of this effort. If this is indeed theater, is it also vanity?”—but those concerns have become more urgent as food insecurity mounts across the country.

One of the first studies of pay-what-you-can restaurants, published earlier this year in peer-reviewed journal Appetite, concluded, “Further study should investigate whether the gaps in service perceived are in fact present, as well as whether the approach addresses this need.” 

Spiritual Senses

OWEE traces its roots to Salt Lake City, where an acupuncturist in 2003 was struggling financially after converting her clinic into a café. She later told the Washington Post that her “spiritual senses” led her to yank the prices from plates of curry and lasagna, instead asking customers for donations.

Her initial success inspired dozens of do-gooders, including the founder of Panera Bread. Ron Shaich in 2010 launched Panera Cares, a network of five nonprofit cafes at the program’s peak. “Our whole idea was not simply to create another soup kitchen,” he told NPR’s Planet Money. “It was to have a real meal, and a real meal with dignity.” The experiment was mostly shelved within the decade, done in by moochers and patrons who misappropriated bathrooms for showering and shooting up.

Another big-name project to emerge in OWEE’s wake was JBJ Soul Kitchen, which in 2009 started serving pay-what-you-can meals in Red Bank, New Jersey. JBJ stands for Jon Bon Jovi.

“It makes folks feel normal.”

Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC spokeswoman Jennifer M. Caslin

When Jennie Knowlton, a New Jersey native and longtime Bon Jovi fan, finally ate at one of Soul Kitchen’s four locations, she was so taken by concept that she made a point of eating at F.A.R.M Café whenever she visited her daughter at Appalachian State University.

“I was like, ‘I wish I could do something like this’,” Knowlton recalled. In 2021, she registered for an OWEE virtual summit. With OWEE members’ encouragement, she said, “I started to read old textbooks on nonprofits, and we put together a board.” Later that year, Quiltmaker Café incorporated and started booking vendor booths at events around her adopted hometown of Pittsboro.

The goal was to open a permanent location. But, as Knowlton found, “You can’t force a building owner to lease to a nonprofit no matter how hard you try. Real estate is very expensive: We’ve really struggled.”

In the interim, Quiltmaker Café every month or so hires a food truck to cater pay-what-you-can lunches in downtown Pittsboro. The café purchases 100 meals and invites community members to eat. “We just stand there and explain what we’re trying to do,” said Knowlton, who estimates Quiltmaker has recouped close to half of its costs from patron donations, with separate charitable giving by benefactors supposed to cover the remainder. 

Commitment to Community

I went to one of Quiltmaker Café’s parking lot pop-ups this summer, and it was just as Knowlton described. After I ordered an Italian sausage from Big Fat Philly Sandwich Shop, the food truck worker didn’t ask for money. She directed me to a wooden donation box on a table alongside the truck, with a Venmo QR code helpfully propped up against it. I guessed at the cost of my lunch and dropped a $10 bill in the box. Then, since the six chairs around Quiltmaker’s folding table were taken, I took my Styrofoam box to a park across the street.

Proponents of pay-what-you-can would doubtless say my experience was compromised by eating alone, since the idea that people from different socioeconomic backgrounds can commune over similar sandwiches is central to the pay-what-you-can premise. In fact, when researchers interviewed café directors for the Appetite study, they found that “the commitment to community as a core tenet of the model at times superseded other objectives.” One interviewee reported her café closed during COVID “because part of (our) mission was a little lost with the to-go.”

Lori Borchers, who serves on OWEE’s board, was among the study’s authors. While the Texas Christian University nursing professor didn’t respond to my interview requests, board director Julie Williams said Borchers is working to establish the tangible benefits of pay-what-you-can, since scientific evidence would strengthen members’ grant requests.

As I debated whether to open the bag of Frito-Lay potato chips that came with my sausage sandwich, I wondered whether it made sense to fund pay-what-you-can startups when food banks are grappling with shortages in the face of surging prices and unprecedented demand. I don’t mind spending 10 bucks on lunch or good works, but I questioned the effectiveness of doing both at once.

Little Free Libraries

“I wasn’t expecting food insecurity to worsen, but it did,” said University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill assistant professor Jessica Soldavini, who serves as research specialist for No Kid Hungry NC. According to data released in May by Feeding America, 1 in 7 adults and 1 in 5 children were food insecure in 2022.

While the statistics are dismaying, Soldavini said frustrations with bureaucracy, the threat of social stigma, and lack of awareness have kept many North Carolinians from claiming food benefits to which they’re entitled. She believes helping to spread the word about government programs—and advocating for better policies, such as universal school lunch—is one of the most useful ways to combat food insecurity.

Another option is for companies and consumers to support existing hunger relief organizations. For example, Newman’s Own, Inc. this summer promoted its new sourdough pizza with a Pay What You Want Pizza truck, promising all money collected in exchange for samples would be directed to the company’s nonprofit arm. (Across the country, eaters ponied up an average of $2.53 a slice.)

Finally, while I couldn’t find anyone who would go on the record confirming as much, it stands to reason that well-heeled people keen to eat with people in need could sup at any feeding center in exchange for a generous donation.

Ultimately, it seems to me, pay-what-you-can cafes are the culinary equivalents of little free libraries. Perhaps it would seem otherwise if these places were already-established restaurants, rather than nonprofit contrivances. But considering that so-called soup kitchens already offer healthful and diverse meals, just as real libraries lend out books for free, it’s hard to argue the pay-what-you-can cafe solves any societal problems.

Instead, the model comes across as guilt-washing for liberals, much as weather-resistant bookcases serve primarily to telegraph their owners’ progressive leanings. Still, as lawn ornaments go, those are hardly more objectionable than your average pink flamingo.