Pay what you want restaurant

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by Erik Lukas

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/pa...aurant-zebrano

Interesting concept. I remember some old threads about trying the pay-what-you-think-it's-worth model with information products (I even did a few myself with mixed results). I wonder how it will turn out for the owner of Zebrano!

I have a feeling that 'in person' creates a much stronger feeling of obligation and perceived social risk than a mail order or internet transaction.

Hi Erik,

I agree with you. I think the "face to face" interaction makes it harder (psychologically) for people to try to "cheat"... They probably feel a social obligation to pay something decent. And if they don't, the staff knows that they paid ridiculously low... The customer would feel uncomfortable.

There's a chain of restaurants which are pay-what-you-want in my city! This might be one of the old threads/posts you remember... Check out this post...

http://www.sowpub.com/forum/showthread.php?p=12438

The chain is called "Lentil As Anything", and they serve vegetarian food. Since I wrote that post back in 2003, they've expanded from one restaurant to three! However, I believe they are organized more like a cooperative. So the staff aren't paid standard salaries, instead, I think they share in any profits. That probably helps their "survivability"...

That post I linked to also mentioned a restaurant I once read about, which was also "pay what you want", which I think was running in the 70s or so. Apparently it was quite successful. Unfortunately, I can't remember now where I read about that one...

Thanks Erik - this is a fascinating topic! It will be interesting to see how the London restaurant fares...

After reading your post, I hunted around and also found more pay-what-you-want restaurants mentioned here.... http://www.springwise.com/food_bever...t_restaurants/

By the way, here's another relevant post from the past - Rooster's experiment with "pay what you think it's worth" for his info-products...

http://www.sowpub.com/forum/showthread.php?p=12419

(Rooster - George Gee - passed away last year, though he made great contributions to this forum and others too...)

Thanks again Erik - fantastic post...

Best wishes,

Dien