Pupp Café (pupp.ie) is an inclusive place. As its name suggests, it’s a pooch-friendly spot that serves doggie treats and herbal “fresh breath” tea for their canine customers. Owners Ella Wallace and Paul Froggatt were determined to cater for a wide range of humans, too.
“When we opened Pupp,” says Froggatt, “we really wanted something on the menu for everyone, whether that be vegan food, allergen-free food or food at different price points.”
As an experiment, Wallace and Froggatt launched their Pay What You Can Porridge, a bowl of organic oats topped with a seasonal compote with no fixed price. People can pay whatever they like, and if asked, the staff suggest between €3 and €4. “The reaction has been fantastic,” says Froggatt. “People really seem to appreciate the flexibility. The average amount far exceeded our expectations.”
What they’ve found is that the average spend on porridge is €4.92, which above the upper limit of the suggested amount. They’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that 81 per cent of visitors spend between €4 and €7 on the porridge, meaning that most customers are supporting the few who may not be able to pay the suggested amount. “This model allows us to have a super-affordable option for those that want it without sacrificing on ingredients or taste.”
Pupp aren’t the only purveyors of the pay-as-you-want model. The Dock Café (the-dock.org) in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter operates on an honesty box system, which they apply to their entire menu. There have been other experiments in this system, though it appears to be challenging to maintain an entire menu based on honesty.
The Hazel House Café (thehazelhouse.ie) in Rathfarnham originally started out as an honesty box café when their initial offering was limited to tea and chocolate bars.
They have since broadened their menu offering to breakfast and lunches, and owner Niall Fitzharris felt they couldn’t sustain the pay-as-you-want method. However, they transferred their honesty box system to their petting zoo, where people pay what they think is appropriate for animal feed.
Pay As You Please in Killarney was an honesty-box based restaurant launched in March 2011 by budding entrepreneur Rob O’Reilly and freshly Ballymaloe-trained chef Barry McBride. O’Reilly had come across the concept in a pay-what-you-can café called Lentils As Anything (lentilsasanything.com) while travelling in Melbourne, Australia.
When O’Reilly and McBride opened in Killarney, the idea generated a lot of publicity both nationally and internationally.
“Given our collective lack of experience, the concept gave us a certain leeway when starting out,” says McBride. “We’d like to think the food was always decent and that the service was always friendly. However, the model allowed us to be rather less polished than other conventional restaurant start-ups.”
The duo closed the doors of Pay As You Please and left the honesty box method behind them in January 2014, and McBride looks back on it as an interesting social experiment, though he recognises the flaws in the model.
“Though the vast majority of people are honest, the obvious negative was that sometimes people simply didn’t pay for their food. Our honesty box sometimes yielded IOUs and scratch cards. It was extremely frustrating to work long hours only for a minority to take advantage of the system.”
Since closing Pay As You Please, O’Reilly launched a guitar business (rorguitars.com) but McBride stayed on in the restaurant space, and reopened in April 2014 as DYNE ( facebook.com/ dynekillarney) serving brunch, lunch and suppers, all at a fixed price.
Pupp’s approach of offering just one dish as a flexi-price option seems to be a more sustainable approach. “It’s been really gratifying to see people support the concept so generously,” says Froggatt.
“Initially the pay-what-you- want menu option was something of an experiment, but the results have shown it to be viable and sustainable from a business perspective.”
You can read the detailed findings from Pupp’s experimental porridge outlined in a blog post on their website at bit.ly/porridgepupp.
