Restaurants Donate Profits to Charities
If you think an über-twee neighborhood bar that serves beer from the local microbrewery and donates all proceeds to charity sounds like something straight out of the hipster utopia in TV’s “Portlandia,” you wouldn’t exactly be wrong.
The ballroom of Portland’s Oregon Public House – a soon-to-open nonprofit pub that will, indeed, serve local beer and seasonal, locally sourced food, pay employees fair wages, and donate all its profit to charities – was recently rented out to film a wedding scene in the IFC show…
Some in S.F., too
The notion is not entirely new. In San Francisco, the owners of hip sister restaurants Mission Chinese Food and Commonwealth have been donating portions of their income to charity for two years or so. Mission Chinese contributes 75 cents from each entree, while Commonwealth donates $10 from each tasting menu.
In Washington, D.C., Cause, a self-described “philanthropub,” also plans to open this fall. Co-founder Nick Vilelle says the company has received a lot of contributed help from the community, which will help it get to profitability much sooner than other restaurants. His goal is to eventually donate $100,000 a year.
“It’s a more socially aware crowd,” says Vilelle, who has worked in the nonprofit world for eight years. “This generation is more involved in these issues and asking more of the companies they are buying from.”
In downtown Houston, a group of restaurant and bar owners called the Organized Kollaboration on Restaurant Affairs plans to open a “charity bar” at the former Red Cat Jazz Cafe on Congress Street in November. All proceeds will be donated to a different Houston organization or social cause each month, says President Bobby Heugel…
