My vision for ZenKitchen restaurant was to create beautiful, delicious and healthful food for the body, mind and spirit. The food would be vegan, seasonal, organic, with no preservatives, additives or genetically modified organisms (GMO). The restaurant would be sustainable, including selling no bottled water, composting, recycling, and supporting local suppliers. It would be an important and vibrant part of the community, giving back to it through support of local artists and causes, and supported by it.
How I Opened ZenKitchen Restaurant with No Money
I was realizing that we might not have the money to open up and maintain a restaurant. To be honest, had the cameras not been on us for The Restaurant Adventures, we may have given up. The strongest force encouraging us onward was the monthly dinner community. Our regular diners from pop-up dinners I was holding monthly were enthusiastic for us to start a restaurant, and many came to us to ask how they could help. Their support was touching, but what we really needed was cash flow.
One day, an idea struck. Could the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, in which supporters pay farms in advance for produce they later receive during the growing season, be used to start up a restaurant? How about a community-supported restaurant project, modeled after a CSA? Perhaps an advance gift certificate program would work: I could host a special event for guests where they would see the space, hear about plans for the renovation, and have the opportunity to buy these gift certificates or “stakes.”
Zen philosophy believes that when we mindfully dwell in the present moment, we completely dissolve into whatever activity manifests. We become the activity. Some call this “flow.” I learned much about flow from the experience of fundraising for ZenKitchen. Instead of getting stuck in details and sabotaging ourselves, we managed to keep the feeling of flow and let that guide the process.
We raised over $20,000 in one day with the CSA project. When you are passionate about making your dreams become reality, I’ve realized that the only way to start to gather support and money, is to begin. You never know what people and support will come forward unless you start.
