The Mixed Income Restaurant

Us, Them + the Drive to be with "our Own"

EAT (Everyone at the Table). A PWYC in Philly.

Years ago, I did some writing work for these NYC socialites for a foundation gala they chaired. All Page Six names. Right before the gala, one of the socialite’s mom, a white upper east side psychiatrist, told me something that has stayed with me and vexed me for decades. 

She said: “We all like to be with our own.” 

She was talking about the gala guest list and the removal of someone not quite in their orbit (and probably a little message to me as well). But it made me consider this idea over and over through the years.  I fumed about it and the audacity she had to say that out loud.

Do we just want to be with our own? 

Turns out, the shrink was kinda ugly about it, but she wasn’t exactly wrong. We are neuro-biologically programmed to see the world as Us vs Them. The science is clear. Oxytocin, the chemical that bathes us in feelings of love and bondedness with our people; makes us fall in love with partners, cling to our parents, become best friends with our siblings, cherish our BFFs as family and put our lives on the line for our children ensures that the Us of this equation is tight. Bonded forever. Oxytocin gives us bumps of generosity, forgiveness, empathy and kindness for the people in our circle.

For our own people.

For the people who represent the Them in this equation, the chemical makes us suspicious. Stanford neurobiologist, Dr. Robert Sapolsky talks about this in his book Behave: The Biology of Humans at tour Best and Worst. Sometimes it’s a call to violence and aggression against Them. Sometimes it’s simply recognizing and registering the signs of difference. It is protection. There is distance. Our brains actually process Thems differently than those in the Us category. It happens so quickly. We are hard wired to notice race, gender, ethnic variations, different languages, socio-economic signals. Our brains light up in fractions of a second when a person who is a Them walks into our area.

And this can have lots of implications for things like justice. It’s easier to drop Them into categories. Essentialism comes in to play. When a Them teen drives drunk and almost kills someone, we are more apt to believe “This is the way they are. This is who this person is to the core.” If one of Us drove drunk and nearly killed someone we might feel upset, angry, betrayed, but we are more prone to forgiving our own, finding a reason for their slip, or believing it was a one time thing, not endemic of who they are. We give more chances to people who are part of Us.

Aunt Chubbys Luncheonette.

And this came to mind while reading a piece in The Nation called: The Story of Late Capitalism as Told Through Panera Bread, written by Devin Thomas O’Shea. The piece is worth a read because it traces the beginnings of Panera from its roots in San Francisco as a quaint sourdough bakery to it’s rise through multiple locations, chaindom through mergers and acquisitions, the entrance of private equity, some very litigious killer caffeinated lemonade and ultimately to - and this is what I’m concerned with here for this essay - their attempt to create a pay-what-you-can (PWYC) restaurant through their charitable arm, Panera Cares.

The idea of the PWYC is simple: people who can pay, pay and hopefully even pay extra and that allows for people who can’t pay to come eat and have their meal comped or offered at a significantly cheaper price.

The PWYC Panera Cares concepts all shuttered by 2019. They just didn’t work. They leave a trail of the cracked bones of shuttered restaurants who tried this model in an attempt to create more equity for their communities. Why they didn’t work is all about Them/Us biologies and our brains.

We are hard-wired to ensure this shit will not work.

Now there have been some PWYC successes. A Denver cafe called SAME — short for “So All May Eat” survives. As does Aunt Chubby’s Luncheonette in Hopewell, New Jersey. And a few others. Some kind of non-for-profit protection keeps the doors open, along with grants and fundraising. The typical capitalist restaurant model isn’t going to cut it. I also believe location has a lot to do with success - there is little chronic homelessness in Hopewell, NJ (near Princeton) where Aunt Chubbies Luncheonette feeds the elderly and house bound, so they will not be overrun with need, for example.

But Panera tried.

“I fundamentally believed that there were enough good people in the world that they would do the right thing,” the founder Panera and Panera Cares, Ron Shaich told Vox, adding that he “particularly loved torturing the cynics” who said there was “no way” his idea would work.

“Our whole idea here was not simply to create another homeless shelter or another soup kitchen. It was actually to have a real meal, and a real meal with dignity.”

At another PWYC in Philly called, EAT (or Everyone at the table) a PWYC in Philly, the mission is the same:

“I couldn’t stand the idea that you have these gorgeous restaurants with nice food, and there are these families who are struggling who could never tap into that,” Mariana Chilton the owner, also a professor of public health at Drexel University, told The Washington Post, “I wanted to make a place where families could come experience some joy.”

I love this. The idea is amazing! And I’m the kind of person who loves these out-of-the-box concepts. Mostly because you just never know what will work and take off and be a great boon for the community. But its tough out there for most PWYC restaurants.

Shaich reported these super-loose stats of his Panera Cares stores:

• 50% of customers paid the suggested donation price for the meal.

• 20% paid extra.

• 20% percent less than the suggested price or didn’t pay at all.

Panera Cares stores folded for one overwhelming reason: They didn’t have enough people willing to afford to pay more than the suggested donation. And that is all about our brains.

Aunt Chubby’s

These were some of the issues that arose outside of keeping the lights on:

Profiling

“People would walk in and [staff] would assume,” Shaich said of Panera Cares, “based on how they looked, how they were dressed, potentially … the color of their skin, how much they were going to pay. “

He had to start sensitivity training for staff. Their brains registered patrons as possible Thems and it showed.

+++++

Customer Complaints

Sharon Davis, a former Panera Cares staffer said that a customer complained about the homeless customers who were eating there that day. “She comes up and goes, ‘Oh my god, these people stink. I can’t stand eating like this.”

People in the upper classes don’t want to eat with Them.

Now, I’m not suggesting people actively choose to exclude the poor, just that we don’t seek it out when we choose a place to have lunch. Going to a PWYC can feel like charity for the upper classes. You do that when you are wanting to support someone else, be generous and community-minded, not when you want to treat yourself.

+++++

Outside of Staff’s Pay Grade

As I found out operating a pantry during the pandemic in our front yard, people who are desperately poor, or mentally ill, addicted and in crisis can be difficult populations to handle. Put a 19-year-old behind the counter and how are they supposed to know how to handle someone in active addiction? Or with a complex mental illness? Should they even?

An example: Some Starbucks started letting anyone use the bathrooms without purchasing food and beverages. The staff have complained that these “third place” community policies have good intentions but put them at risk, sometimes danger, and require them to make decisions outside of their expertise. Employees said they had to play special worker, send people to rehab and pick up spent needles in store bathrooms without proper gear and receptacles.

Us/Them at work.

+++++

Homelessness

It is common that when there are an abundance of unhoused folks, they will come, en masse, for the food. Many of these PWYC restaurants were unprepared for the constant presence of the unhoused around their stores.

In The Meth Lunches I wrote about this because there is so much need in so many cities that a small eatery like this could, and has been, easily overrun with unhoused and chronically in-crisis people.

+++++

Listicles Bring the Cheapos

When a PWYC restaurant gets onto a list or is heavily advertised, it can get into view of the people seeking out “cheap eats.” There is a lot of anecdotal chat about this, like diners coming with the intention of paying a fraction of the suggested price, and coming back over and over. This can suck dry the PWYC restaurant.

+++++

The Zinger: Paying Customers Don’t Want to Pay to be with Poor People

"We have stereotypes of what homelessness looks like," an owner says, and unfortunately, potential customers lump the cafe into the same category as a soup kitchen…Our biggest obstacle has been convincing the general population that we're for everyone.”

In many ways these PWYC restaurants defy our brains. We know that how people feel about social issues doesn’t always translate to the cash register. You might hate hunger but still not give to a hunger charity. You might support LGBTQ+ people but still eat at Chic-Fil-A.

What’s more probable is that the people coming to these PWYC places aren’t attracting people who have a lot of extra cash. Brooklyn restaurant, Santorini Grill added on a PWYC component in 2011. They went out of business four months later.

"Before that, business was a lot better," the owner told Gothamist at the time. But once PWYC went into effect, she"couldn't make up the expenses to pay the bills. Not because people abused it. They just stopped coming."

A PWYC in Houston.

The problem with PWYC restaurants is not simply the complexities of the situations of people in crisis and poverty, although that clearly is an issue, or that the government has left non-profits to manage the care of its people, although this is a fact, its also - and this is critical - that we as middle and upper income people don’t want to dine in a restaurant and pay money so that we can be near an unhoused person’s unkept appearance or see things that make us sad and uncomfortable. No one wants to go lower down the socio-economic ladder unless we are “helping.”

It’s not our morality. It’s hardwired into our brains.

There is Us.

There is Them.

So the Upper East side socialite shrink may have been right. But we don’t have to accept it. We can be intentional about our impulses. We can reign them in, those animal and violent parts of ourselves.

We must be intentional in the world to be better than our evolutionary programming.

___________________

END NOTES:

This is a photo from a recent book club that invited me to come and talk about The Meth Lunches. They are a group of educators, principals and teachers, and let me tell you - teachers are on the ground for all of our social challenges. They see everything. They step in all the time, silently and make things better for their kids. I learned a lot. They are the OG helpers.

And book clubs are now my favorite thing to do as an author. Thank you for feeding me, ladies, in all the ways.

Thanks, as always, everyone for reading. xo Kim