Originally published 2020-04-28.
JBJ Soul Kitchen is a group of community restaurants in New Jersey run by the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation. Nobody sees a price on the menu. Guests who can afford it leave a donation, guests who cannot afford it eat for free or volunteer in exchange for their meal, and everyone sits down to the same three-course dinner. In January 2020 the singer and his wife, Dorothea Bongiovi, opened the third location, and the first on a university campus, at Rutgers University–Newark.
Here is how the model works, why a rock star ended up opening a dining room for hungry students, and what the idea can teach anyone thinking about feeding people with dignity.
Where the Soul Kitchens are and who they serve
The foundation's own site lists three permanent dining rooms: one on Monmouth Street in Red Bank, one on Hooper Avenue in Toms River, and the campus restaurant inside the Paul Robeson Campus Center at Rutgers–Newark. The Newark kitchen is open on weekdays and is reserved for members of the Rutgers–Newark community, meaning students, faculty and staff. The two Jersey Shore locations are open to the public.
The Rutgers site opened on 22 January 2020, according to ABC7 coverage of the launch. At the time Bon Jovi said the Red Bank and Toms River kitchens had already served well over 100,000 meals over roughly a decade. The foundation now reports around 200,000 meals served at those two shore restaurants. The first, in Red Bank, opened in 2011; Toms River followed later, in a town that was badly hit when Superstorm Sandy came ashore in October 2012.
A small correction to a story that is often repeated: in later interviews the couple linked their early kitchens to the Sandy recovery, but Red Bank was running about a year before the storm. It was the Toms River expansion that grew directly out of the needs Sandy left behind.
How "pay what you can" works in practice
The basic rule is simple. Diners who can pay are asked for a suggested donation instead of a bill. Diners who cannot pay are welcome anyway, and they are invited to give an hour or so of volunteer time, for example helping in the kitchen or the dining room. That exchange matters to the people who run the project: a meal earned by work feels different from a handout, and it brings guests into the life of the restaurant.
The detail that makes the Soul Kitchens stand out is discretion. Paying and non-paying guests are served the same food at the same tables, and servers are not told who has contributed. Nobody has to queue at a separate counter or carry a voucher that marks them out as needy.
At Rutgers the arrangement was adjusted for campus life. ABC7 reported that students and faculty could pay it forward with a minimum donation of $12, which covered a meal for someone else. The foundation's current site describes its pay-it-forward program in terms of $20 donations that provide meals for guests who cannot pay. Check the restaurant's own pages for current amounts and hours, since they change.
The cooking is not an afterthought either. Meals are three courses, built where possible around local and seasonal produce, and the kitchens offer options for vegan, gluten-free, kosher and halal diets. The shore restaurants have earned warm local reviews on the strength of the food itself.
Why a college campus?
Food insecurity among students is easy to dismiss with the old joke about living on instant noodles. Dorothea Bongiovi pushed back on that image during the launch, saying the starving student is far less romantic than people like to think.
The numbers support her. University officials told ABC7 that around one in three students at four-year colleges struggles to get enough to eat, and that more than half of Rutgers–Newark students have exceptional financial need. Many are the first in their family to attend university, commute long distances, work part-time jobs or support relatives. A tight week can force a choice between a textbook, a bus pass and lunch.
Bon Jovi explained to reporters that the campus food service provider approached the foundation, and that the couple already knew campus hunger was a growing problem, so the partnership felt natural. The new dining room also worked alongside the university's existing food pantry rather than replacing it. A pantry hands out groceries to take home; a restaurant offers a hot meal, a place to sit and company.
The pandemic test
The Rutgers kitchen had been open for barely two months when Covid-19 closed campuses across the United States in March 2020. Like many community kitchens, the Soul Kitchens switched to takeaway and delivery so that people who relied on them would not suddenly go without. Volunteers prepared boxed meals, and the shore locations supported local residents who had lost work.
That flexibility is a useful lesson. A community restaurant is valuable because of the room and the shared table, but the deeper purpose is to make sure people eat. When the room had to close, the purpose stayed.
More than food: the wider foundation
The Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation was set up in 2006 with a focus on breaking cycles of poverty and homelessness. Before the kitchens, much of its work went into housing. By the time the Rutgers restaurant opened, the foundation said it had helped create more than 600 units of affordable and supportive housing in ten states, including homes for young people leaving care and for veterans.
The kitchens grew out of that same idea: tackle the immediate need, but do it in a way that treats people as neighbours rather than cases. The aim is that a meal can also be a first point of contact with other support in the community, offered when guests want it rather than pressed on them.
Lessons for anyone running a community meal
You do not need a famous name to borrow from this model. Community cafés in many countries use versions of the same approach. The parts that tend to make the biggest difference are:
- Remove the visible line between payers and non-payers. Same menu, same plates, same tables, with no tickets or coloured tokens that single anyone out.
- Offer a way to contribute that is not money. Volunteering for a meal gives guests a role and keeps the kitchen staffed.
- Cook food people would choose. A good meal says the guest matters. Dietary options make it usable for more people.
- Partner with what already exists. At Rutgers the restaurant complemented the pantry and the campus caterer instead of competing with them.
- Be honest about the numbers. Pay-what-you-can cafés depend on a share of guests paying more than the cost. Some similar projects elsewhere have closed when too few did, so clear messaging about suggested donations is essential.
If you want to help, the simplest options are to eat at a Soul Kitchen and leave a generous donation, volunteer a shift, or support a food pantry or community café near you. Campus pantries in particular often welcome donations during exam periods and holidays, when need tends to peak. For a similar story from closer to the beginning of the project, see this account of a Baltimore restaurant that closed for five days to feed homeless people.
Sources: JBJ Soul Kitchen (official site); ABC7: Jon Bon Jovi launches 1st JBJ Soul Kitchen on a college campus at Rutgers University-Newark; TODAY / NBC News video interview with Jon and Dorothea Bon Jovi.
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