Originally published 2020-03-04.
JBJ Soul Kitchen is a set of nonprofit community restaurants in New Jersey, created by the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, where nothing on the menu has a price. Guests who can afford it leave a donation; guests who cannot are served the same three-course meal and invited to give some time as volunteers instead. The first restaurant opened in Red Bank in October 2011, a second followed in Toms River, and the model has since spread to university campuses.
It is one of the more practical answers a famous musician has given to a simple problem: people who are hungry often also feel ashamed to ask for help. Soul Kitchen tries to solve both at once.
How paying works at a restaurant with no prices
When you sit down at Soul Kitchen, you get a menu without a single dollar sign. According to the restaurant's own site, diners who are able to pay are asked to make a suggested donation, and every extra $20 given helps cover meals for guests who cannot pay. The idea is described there as "Pay It Forward": a paying customer is not just buying a dinner, but funding someone else's.
Guests who have no money are not turned away or sent to a separate line. They eat in the same dining room, from the same menu, and are told how they can volunteer if they wish. Volunteers attend an orientation and work alongside the staff, serving tables, washing dishes or helping in the kitchen. Over time that volunteering can also open the door to the organisation's job-training programme.
Soul Kitchen (@jbjsoulkitchen) on
In earlier years the organisation reported that roughly half of its meals were covered by donations and the rest by guests contributing their time. Those figures shift from year to year, so the restaurant's website is the best place for the current numbers. Its homepage now counts more than 200,000 meals served across Red Bank and Toms River.
Red Bank, Toms River and later locations
The Red Bank restaurant, on Monmouth Street, opened on 19 October 2011. Red Bank is a small town on the Jersey Shore, close to where Jon Bon Jovi grew up. He was born in Perth Amboy and went to high school in Sayreville, both in New Jersey; the band's 1988 album New Jersey is named after the state, not after any single town.
Soul Kitchen (@jbjsoulkitchen) on
The Toms River restaurant, on Hooper Avenue, followed in 2016. Ocean County, where Toms River sits, was among the areas hit hardest when Hurricane Sandy made landfall in October 2012, and many families there were still struggling years later. A restaurant built around dignity rather than charity handouts was a good fit for a town in recovery.
Later, Soul Kitchen opened a location at Rutgers University–Newark, inside the Paul Robeson Campus Center, aimed at students and staff who face food insecurity. Wikipedia also lists one at New Jersey City University. Campus hunger is a quieter problem than homelessness, but a real one: students who skip meals to pay rent or tuition are common in many American colleges.
Opening hours differ between locations and change from season to season, so check the official site before you go.
What is on the menu
The food is meant to be a proper restaurant meal, not a soup-kitchen tray. Each visit is a three-course, American-style dinner: a soup or salad to start, a main course with a choice of fish, meat or a vegetarian dish, and then dessert or fruit. The menu rotates regularly; the site currently says it changes every two weeks.
Some of the vegetables and herbs come from the restaurant's own organic garden, which also gives volunteers another way to take part. Dietary needs such as vegetarian or gluten-free meals can usually be met.
Soul Kitchen (@jbjsoulkitchen) on
There are no reservations. Diners are seated as they arrive, often at shared tables, which means a retiree, a local office worker and someone who slept in a car last night may end up eating together. The organisation gives seating priority to guests who are in need, so paying customers are sometimes asked to wait.
Why the pay-what-you-can model matters
Soul Kitchen belongs to a wider movement of "community cafés" or pay-what-you-can restaurants in the United States. The best-known network, One World Everybody Eats, grew out of a Salt Lake City café and now supports similar projects across the country. What they share is the belief that a free meal works better when it does not mark the guest as a charity case.
That matters because stigma keeps people away from help. Someone who would never queue at a food bank may feel comfortable at a restaurant where nobody knows who paid. Shared tables also do something food banks rarely can: they put neighbours from different income levels in the same room, talking to each other.
The model has limits. It depends on a steady flow of paying customers, donors and volunteers, and it cannot replace public food assistance or affordable housing. It is best understood as one piece of a local safety net rather than a solution to poverty on its own.
Soul Kitchen (@jbjsoulkitchen) on
The foundation's wider work on homelessness
The restaurants are run by the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, which began in 2006 under the name Philadelphia Soul Charitable Foundation, after the Philadelphia Soul arena football team that the singer co-owned. Its stated aim is to help break the cycle of poverty and homelessness.
In 2007 Bon Jovi announced a project to rehabilitate a block of 15 homes in North Philadelphia, and the foundation has since supported affordable and supportive housing for young people leaving foster care, veterans and other vulnerable groups. It has also backed projects that help young mothers and their children and provide shelter beds with medical support. The foundation's site lists current partners and projects.
At the restaurants themselves, the foundation runs an employment and training programme that teaches kitchen skills, résumé writing and interview preparation, and connects participants with advice on money and other practical matters.
Jon stopped by to see what was cooking at #JBJSoulKitchen on Sunday pic.twitter.com/HraAZ541r4
— JBJ Soul Foundation (@JBJSoulFound) June 12, 2017
How to visit, volunteer or donate
If you live near one of the locations, there are three easy ways to support the project:
- Eat there and pay forward. A meal with a donation on top directly funds dinners for guests who cannot pay.
- Volunteer. Sign up through the official site and attend the orientation; shifts include serving, kitchen work and gardening.
- Give from a distance. Donations can be made online, and the site also lists events such as fundraisers and cook-offs.
Jon Bon Jovi and his wife, Dorothea, have often been photographed working in the kitchen themselves. The real work, though, is done every day by staff and local volunteers, and it is their steady presence that makes a restaurant with no prices possible.
Bon Jovi (@bonjovi) on
Sources: JBJ Soul Kitchen (official site); Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation; Wikipedia: Jon Bon Jovi; Wikipedia: New Jersey (album); photos and posts by @jbjsoulkitchen, @bonjovi and @JBJSoulFound; story first reported by Bright Side.
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