It started with a simple idea: In this time when dining out is an increasingly unattainable proposition for so many people, what if restaurants took money out of the equation? What if — for one day, at least — diners only had to pay however much they could afford?
This was the vision that Mexico City chefs Norma Listman and Saqib Keval had when they started hosting “Paga Lo Que Puedas” days at their now-Michelin-starred restaurant Masala y Maiz. They weren’t the first restaurant owners to experiment with a Pay What You Can model, but they may be the first to try to turn it into a worldwide movement.
“The restaurant industry generally is kind of shitty … and it’s really easy to get caught in that spiral of everything that’s wrong about the industry,” says Keval, who’s probably best known in the Bay Area as one of the co-founders of Oakland-based People’s Kitchen Collective food justice organization.
“But this wave of interest from restaurants all over the world made me feel hopeful,” he says. It made me see that we’re not alone.”…