SAME Cafe

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title: "SAME Cafe" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["simple-living", "companies-based-in-denver"] description: "Community cafe in Denver, Colorado, USA" topic_path: "general/simple-living" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAME_Cafe" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Community cafe in Denver, Colorado, USA ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/SAME_Cafe_Storefront.jpg" caption="url-status=dead}}"] ::

Economics

They pay about $2,500 a month for rent and approximately $2,500 for the food. Before their expansion in November, 2008 they served 40–50 meals a day with seven tables. Since the expansion they now serve 75–100 meals a day. The average food cost is approximately $2 and the average donation per meal determined by a reporter was $3.66. Over time, the average donation has decreased, but it was offset by an increase in customers. They offer a limited menu which changes daily, simplifying the variety of food they need to purchase and reducing the amount of wasted food. They buy from a variety of sources, including direct from local farmers, warehouse stores such as Costco, higher end grocery stores such as Whole Foods Market and even the Denver Botanic Gardens.

They were originally open for lunch six days a week and closed on Sunday. Currently, they are only open Monday through Friday.

Recognition

On the March 9, 2009 NBC Nightly News broadcast, Brian Williams singled out the SAME Cafe for recognition in the "Make a Difference" segment. That broadcast inspired Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich to create in 2010 a chain of six similar restaurants, Panera Cares, all of which closed by 2019.

References

References

1. Gergen, Chris. (December 3, 2008). "The 'pay as you can' cafe". Washington Times.
2. Maher, Jared Jacang. (February 25, 2009). "SAME Cafe: The restaurant where you pay what you can". Denver Westword News.
3. Meadow, James B.. (April 18, 2007). "SAME Cafe: So All May Eat; Restaurant serves food to everyone; pay if you can". Rocky Mountain News.
4. Porter, William. (October 8, 2008). "SAME making difference". Denver Post.
5. O'Neil, Roger. (March 9, 2009). "In Denver, a pay-what-you-can café". NBC News.
6. "Panera Cares". msnbc.com.
7. (February 6, 2019). "Panera Bread closes last pay-what-you-can restaurant". Nation's Restaurant News.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::