Everybody eats: A brilliant concept and an awesome charity | A highlight of my month.

So much has happened this month.

I write to you from the windy yet wonderful Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. It's day 14 of our multi-city holiday, it's my first real trip to NZ (despite it being closer than the other side of my own country: Australia), and it's day 31 of writing consecutive posts here on Hive.

Since it's Hive Power Up day, I'm here posting after Powering Up 10.000 HIVE, as has been my usual habit most months since joining Hive back in September last year (2021). But I've also just completed the HiveBloPoMo ("Hive Blog Posting Month") which asks participants to write a (decent!) post every single day for the month of November.

These fingertips have typed a lot of words in the last 31 days!

As I was saying, a lot has happened in that time. And there have been many beautiful, wonderful, touching moments that make me appreciate that I am alive. I want to share one of them with you now.

It starts with walking along Dixon Street after we'd had dinner out on Tuesday night (two nights ago) and were on our way back to the accommodation. I saw a signboard--like a sandwich board--on the side of the footpath at the bottom of a set of stairs. I'm not sure what drew my eyes to it but before I knew it I was reading the menu for that night and the brief explanation that this venue was a "pay-as-you-feel" restaurant.

My head put the pricing method and the name of the restaurant together... and my heart immediately got it. I was immediately full of love, excitement and appreciation for whoever had come up with this concept.

After seeing that they offered vegetarian options and tried as often as possible to work with dietary requirements, I requested that we do dinner there the next night. I photographed the signboard to make sure we could find it again. (I also wanted to look at their website and see what I could learn about the organisation).

At 5:53 pm the next night (Wed) we arrived ready for their 6 pm opening and there was a line at the bottom of the stairs of others also waiting to go in. Our soon-to-be fellow restaurant-goers had organised themselves well so I got the sense this was business as usual for this 4-night-a-week venue. We lined up and I read through the FAQs on their website while we waited alongside well-dressed but casual people, people who seemed likely to be homeless and everyone in between.

Turns out they (Everybody Eats) are a charity (no surprises there), that they have a few paid staff but also lots of volunteers, that they have partnered with local commercial food providers who give them surplus food that's still within date (i.e. not good for the retailer for some reason but still safe and suitable for human consumption) and that their pay-as-you-feel pricing allows for those really struggling to eat for free and those who could just as easily afford to eat anywhere they like to pay more than the cost of their meal, thereby balancing the whole lot out.

Somehow it seem to magically work because the 3-course-meal Brad and I ate was scrumptious and when I asked the manager how much the real cost of the meal was (so we could make sure we paid over and above that, thereby covering one or more meals for one of the homeless people dining in the restaurant that night) he said "$5".

What?! $5?! Crazy-amazing-awesome.

So for less than the price of any other meal we'd consumed thus far on our trip (not including boxed breakfast cereal from the supermarket) we got an incredibly yummy, chef-prepared, 3-course-meal and paid for other people's meals as well.

That, my friends, is why I was excited to eat there.

That, my friends, is why I love this concept.

That, my friends, is, in my opinion, the future of business; where vision and love and creativity come together to solve genuine problems.

Our dinner was eaten with each other, but also with four other strangers. Delightful strangers. Two were women who had both migrated from other countries (Australia and the UK) to do the second half of their life differently. They were roommates, one volunteered at the venue and both were awesome, lively, adventurous types.

The other two arrived after we were already halfway through our mains; a man and a woman, in their 30's perhaps, who felt like they were probably a couple, and who both sounded like Kiwis (New Zealanders). They too were lovely and entertained our questions about Wellington with presence, patience and thoughtfulness.

We walked out 30 minutes later--making space for the very busy venue to feed more people--with bellies full and smiles on our faces. To my delight, Brad had had as much fun as me and we were both amazed at how much of an awesome time we'd had.

It just goes to show that sometimes it's worth doing something a little strange, a little weird, a little new because we never know what magic will come from being brave enough to do so.

While there's no alcohol at an Everybody Eats venue this photo gives you a sense of what it was like.

Credit for photo #1 at the top of this post goes to this person.

Photo #2 was taken by me on my Google Pixel 2XL.

And this is a HPUD post disguised as a gratitude post 😁😀🧡😍🤩