Introductory Letter To Restaurant
Dear Fatima,
We were very happy to meet you when we had dinner at Bonnington Cafe on Wednesday night. We loved the place, the food, and the ambiance -- and we have since shared the story of anonymously paying for that table with so many of our friends. Thank you.
As Aurelien, to whom you gave your email address, mentioned to you, a group of us a very keen to start "Karma Kitchen" in London and wanted to explore the idea of hosting it at Bonnington Cafe on a once/month basis.
At Karma Kitchen, there are no prices on the menu and the check reads $0.00 with only this footnote: "Your meal was a gift from someone who came before you. To keep the chain of gifts alive, we invite you to pay it forward for those dine after you." That radical trust and generosity makes for an enitrely unique dining experience. At a traditional restaurant, food is offered in exchange for money; at a soup kitchen, food is offered because it paid for by a government agency; at Karma Kitchen, food is offered as a gift from someone who came before you and you are invited to pay-it-forward for someone who comes after you. In deepening those peer-to-peer bonds, Karma Kitchen helps create a future that moves from transaction to trust, from self-oriented isolation to shared community, and from fear of scarcity to celebration of abundance.
In United States, two major cities host such Karma Kitchen experiments and around the world, several such "gift economy" operations are in motion. It has been featured in all kinds of mainstream media, and the concept is spreading rapidly. You can learn more about this online at: www.karmakitchen.org
If you would be open to exploring the idea of bringing Karma Kitchen at Bonnington Cafe, we would really welcome the opportunity to be brainstorm further. When we host Karma Kitchen events, a team of volunteers would man the cafe -- while we anticipate that you would want to use your own chefs, volunteers would seat the guests, serve/bus the tables, fulfill orders, do dishes, and just about anything else. And certainly, we would offer a preset 'rent' that would cover the cost of your food and general upkeep of the restaurant. Past experience with such experiments shows that while this wouldn't provide hefty financial profits for the restaurant, they have enjoyed a dramatic increase in social marketing and brand equity -- not to mention the deep satisfaction of serving the community.
When we ate at the cafe last time, all of us felt a strong synergistic connection with the values with which you run Bonnington Cafe. And we were excited at the potential of bringing Karma Kitchen to Bonnington Cafe.
We would really appreciate the opportunity to connect with you further around this idea. If this would be of interest to Bonnington Cafe, please let us know of a suitable time for an introductory meeting.
Growing in generosity,
Aditi, Trishna, Ram, Aurelin, ....
P.S. You might also enjoy reading these two press articles: Karma Kitchen Has Selflessness On the Menu, A Restaurant With No Checks