4 ms·

This makes me think of the Sisters of the Road in Portland, Ore. It's technically meant for the homeless/poor, but they serve a very nice lunch or dinner for $

This makes me think of the Sisters of the Road in Portland, Ore. It's technically meant for the homeless/poor, but they serve a very nice lunch or dinner for $1.50 or $1.25 (iirc). I love that they charge that small amount, because it makes it more sustainable and less of a pure charity where every meal is 100% based on some kind of donation budget. I've always thought that there should be more organizations like this where the charity is that the service is provided at cost, in a profit free way. By using this model charities wouldn't be utterly dependent on donations. Its such a beautiful way to fairly utilize capitalism for justice. I'm not sure if the $1.50 completely covers the cost of the meal but its completely possible. If you ever felt like going there for a meal I wouldn't discourage you. It's actually a nice thing to try to interact with homeless people on an equal basis. More than that it's also valuable life experience to see how different life can be from your own. I think my experiences of homeless life taught me things about psychology and humans nature that I couldn't have learned any other way and I feel experienced in life in ways that are hard to explain. Its like going to another country to learn the language. If you do go, the house would probably appreciate a $5 bill for the meal, which is 100% worth that. I will say that Sisters is typically fully booked up every day. So you'd want to dine there on a day where they weren't booked up, so as to not deny a space to someone who needed it.

rootusrootus 5y ago
> they serve a very nice lunch or dinner for $1.50 or $1.25 (iirc). During covid, they're charging nothing at all.
prawn 5y ago
Made me wonder what dining out would cost if the labour were free, and/or if the building (rent, mortgage, etc) were free. I assume those are the two significant costs of any restaurant.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  it depends a lot on the kind of food. I once asked the owner about this when I worked at a pizza place. the "house salad" was almost straight profit; lettuce, tomatoes, onions, etc. cost basically nothing when purchased in bulk. the salads that included cheese were more like a 300% markup over the material inputs. interestingly, wings were sold at a slight loss. I guess you don't want a whole group to pick a different pizza place just because one person wanted wings.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >interestingly, wings were sold at a slight loss. I guess you don't want a whole group to pick a different pizza place just because one person wanted wings. Shouldn't this logic work in reverse as well? In other words, "they were able to charge more for wings because people wouldn't order from a different place just to save a few bucks on wings"?
    - leetcrew 5y ago
      to some extent I'm just regurgitating what the owner told me. the guy was a bit neurotic. he would obsessively compare his prices with all the other local takeout places. there wasn't really a cohesive business strategy in the pricing other than "match or beat everyone else". for high volume items like pizza, this meant playing around with the inputs until they were profitable, but he just accepted that he would take a loss on a few infrequently sold items (although he would absolutely lose his shit if you didn't charge someone for an extra side of ranch with wings). I'm not sure he was completely wrong though. the bulk of the customers were teenagers and working class families, two extremely price conscious demographics. I'm sure a fair chunk of them would actually go somewhere else to save a few bucks on a routine dinner. getting pizza isn't necessarily "going out" to the working families; sometimes it's just the most cost effective way to feed the family that one night that neither parent has time to cook.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    Used to have a neighbor who owned several Domino's Pizza locations. He said the cheese pizzas were a loss for him. Not only because the price is so low but also because cheese is one of the most expensive toppings. When you order other toppings, they can put a lot less cheese on the pizza but for the plain cheese pizza, they can't get away with skimping on the cheese.
    - 6510 5y ago
      Its not nessasrly skimping. To much cheese makes other things soggy.
em-bee 5y ago
there are places where you get to pay what you want. you should pay something, but you decide how much. the one we have been to looked like a high end fine dining restaurant, and we were treated as such. it was driven by some buddhist philosophy and it effectively allowed those who could afford it to subsidize the meals for those who couldn't. it doesn't need to be fine dining, but i like the idea of having a place where less and better off can go to eat and noone has to be ashamed that they can't afford their meal.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
There's a similar restaurant for the homeless in Atlanta. I'm not sure they charge anything for the meals but it is a table service restaurant with menus and the other trappings of a typical casual dining service. The desire is to not just feed the homeless but also to give them some feeling of normalcy and dignity, even if just for one meal. On Sundays the general public can eat at the restaurant. It's run by church youth groups on Sundays. Because most of them have limited to no restaurant experience, the service is a bit slow but tolerable. All of the proceeds from the Sunday meal service for the general public goes into keeping the restaurant running the other six days of the week.

rootusrootus 5y ago

> they serve a very nice lunch or dinner for $1.50 or $1.25 (iirc). During covid, they're charging nothing at all.

prawn 5y ago

Made me wonder what dining out would cost if the labour were free, and/or if the building (rent, mortgage, etc) were free. I assume those are the two significant costs of any restaurant.

leetcrew 5y ago
it depends a lot on the kind of food. I once asked the owner about this when I worked at a pizza place. the "house salad" was almost straight profit; lettuce, tomatoes, onions, etc. cost basically nothing when purchased in bulk. the salads that included cheese were more like a 300% markup over the material inputs. interestingly, wings were sold at a slight loss. I guess you don't want a whole group to pick a different pizza place just because one person wanted wings.
- gruez 5y ago
  >interestingly, wings were sold at a slight loss. I guess you don't want a whole group to pick a different pizza place just because one person wanted wings. Shouldn't this logic work in reverse as well? In other words, "they were able to charge more for wings because people wouldn't order from a different place just to save a few bucks on wings"?
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    to some extent I'm just regurgitating what the owner told me. the guy was a bit neurotic. he would obsessively compare his prices with all the other local takeout places. there wasn't really a cohesive business strategy in the pricing other than "match or beat everyone else". for high volume items like pizza, this meant playing around with the inputs until they were profitable, but he just accepted that he would take a loss on a few infrequently sold items (although he would absolutely lose his shit if you didn't charge someone for an extra side of ranch with wings). I'm not sure he was completely wrong though. the bulk of the customers were teenagers and working class families, two extremely price conscious demographics. I'm sure a fair chunk of them would actually go somewhere else to save a few bucks on a routine dinner. getting pizza isn't necessarily "going out" to the working families; sometimes it's just the most cost effective way to feed the family that one night that neither parent has time to cook.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Used to have a neighbor who owned several Domino's Pizza locations. He said the cheese pizzas were a loss for him. Not only because the price is so low but also because cheese is one of the most expensive toppings. When you order other toppings, they can put a lot less cheese on the pizza but for the plain cheese pizza, they can't get away with skimping on the cheese.
  - 6510 5y ago
    Its not nessasrly skimping. To much cheese makes other things soggy.

em-bee 5y ago

there are places where you get to pay what you want. you should pay something, but you decide how much. the one we have been to looked like a high end fine dining restaurant, and we were treated as such. it was driven by some buddhist philosophy and it effectively allowed those who could afford it to subsidize the meals for those who couldn't. it doesn't need to be fine dining, but i like the idea of having a place where less and better off can go to eat and noone has to be ashamed that they can't afford their meal.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

There's a similar restaurant for the homeless in Atlanta. I'm not sure they charge anything for the meals but it is a table service restaurant with menus and the other trappings of a typical casual dining service. The desire is to not just feed the homeless but also to give them some feeling of normalcy and dignity, even if just for one meal. On Sundays the general public can eat at the restaurant. It's run by church youth groups on Sundays. Because most of them have limited to no restaurant experience, the service is a bit slow but tolerable. All of the proceeds from the Sunday meal service for the general public goes into keeping the restaurant running the other six days of the week.