#karma kitchen

[hospitality-world-news]

Kitchens Centre, a shared kitchen proptech startup raises Pre Series A from Village Global – ET HospitalityWorld Delhi-based Shared Kitchen startup Kitchens Centre has raised an undisclosed Pre Series A from US-based Village Global.

[adoerofstuff]

The Gift Economy

Giving for the love of giving. Profound ideas of volunteering to spread love and gratitude. People respond more to generosity. Kindness begets kindness begets kindness..

[micdotcom]

Karma Kitchen doesn’t charge a thing — and it’s a huge success.

Karma Kitchen is shaking up the restaurant business with a radical approach to paying for your meal. The idea is simple: Pay it forward. Customers don't pay for themselves, they pay for whomever comes after them. It started out as an experiment, but considering the number of meals and cities served it’s hardly one anymore. 

[upworthy]

Picture This: You Walk Into A Restaurant. Eat. Get A Bill For $0.

"It's better to give than to receive." If that idea sounds like an overly optimistic load of hippie-dippie foolishness, you may never have eaten at an incredible place like this.

[newstfionline]

Lessons from a pay-it-forward restaurant: the importance of gratitude

By YES! Magazine, November 6, 2013

Imagine a restaurant where there are no prices on the menu; a place where the meal is served as a gift by volunteers, and at the end of it guests receive a bill for a total of $0.00.

The bill comes with a note that explains their meal was a gift from someone who came before them. If they wish to pay it forward, they can make a contribution for someone who comes after them and help keep the circle going. This restaurant is called Karma Kitchen--and it actually exists. And over the years, running this pay-it-forward restaurant has taught us at KindSpring.org a great deal about gratitude.

It baffles people to know that Karma Kitchen has no tracking systems--we don't monitor how much individual tables receive and how much they give. Instead, we just focus on giving everyone a genuine experience of generosity.

When we started in 2007 in Berkeley, Calif., we had no idea whether we would sink or float. But more than six years later Karma Kitchen is still going strong. It has served more than 30,000 meals and now has chapters in half-a-dozen cities around the world. And it is all sustained by gratitude.

Karma Kitchen works on the deceptively simple premise that the heart that fills, spills. The nature of gratitude is to overflow its banks and circulate. It does not stand still. But remove that ineffable quality from the equation, and the virtuous cycle breaks down.

The sociologist Georg Simmel called gratitude "the moral memory of mankind." It serves to connect us to each other in small, real, and human ways. Remove it from the fabric of our lives, and all relationship becomes an endless series of soulless transactions. We become more prone to a sense of entitlement and less available to a sense of life's wonder and mystery.

But when we receive something as a gift, as opposed to a purchase, we drop out of our patterns of constant calculation. We step out of the realm of price tags and into the realm of the priceless. This is an important shift.

Another lesson we've learned at Karma Kitchen is that there is a subtle but important difference between interactions dictated by a sense of obligation or guilt and those that are catalyzed by gratitude. With obligation or guilt there is a sense of indebtedness. It is a disempowering state.

Gratitude is the opposite. It is a feeling with wings, joyful and spirited.

Gratitude is a creative state. At Karma Kitchen, guests and volunteers alike have illustrated this fact in myriad ways. In addition to the monetary contributions from guests that keep the wheels of the restaurant turning, Karma Kitchen has witnessed thousands of other spontaneous offerings--everything from songs, poems, and artwork to exquisite magazines and inspiring DVDs that are made available to all on our "Kindness Table."

But perhaps even more important than what transpires at the restaurant is what happens outside its walls. Gratitude does not recognize strict boundaries, and once ignited it asserts itself in the rhythm of our daily lives. It makes us kinder and more compassionate, more willing and ready to act on our impulses for good.

As one guest-turned-volunteer put it, "I've realized Karma Kitchen has turned me into the kind of person who now stops when I see someone with a flat tire on the highway."

There's more to it. Science is now showing us that gratitude can positively influence our health, happiness, energy levels, and longevity. A growing number of studies indicate that gratitude is a muscle that can be exercised and built up. Simple interventions like maintaining a journal of what you're thankful for have been demonstrated to have a deep impact. The key lies in sharpening our awareness and tuning in to the gifts that we hold in each moment.

[srini360]

Today I had an opportunity to have my lunch at Karma Kitchen, here in DC. Such a novel idea of paying-it-forward for those who follow us at  the same table. Can't wait to visit them in Berkeley when I am in Bay Area. 

[interveningevolution]

Designing For Generosity. @TedTalks by Nipun Mehta #giftivism #inspiring #rbe #resourcebasedeconomy