How it All Started
While we can't remember for certain
when we first came up with the idea for our restaurant, we know it has
been lodged firmly in the back of our minds for several years now.
Every so often the idea would resurface and we would daydream about how
great it would be if we could pull it off. However, conventional wisdom
coupled with the fear of the unknown would force the thought back into
the depths from which it had come, filed inside the folder marked as Maybe Someday.
Opening a restaurant in general is a risky venture, since nearly 80% of those fail in their first year, let alone a restaurant that subsists solely on donations. Donations, you ask? That's right, this dream of ours was to open a restaurant without prices, and without a fixed menu. A restaurant where people could come in and choose from among the entrees of the day or week, and could in exchange leave whatever money they felt was fair and could afford. We were in love with the idea, but we had no idea how we could possibly make it work.
We both had good jobs working in Illinois, and the thought of leaving that type of security to follow a half-baked dream with little to no financial promise was more than a little scary. Then in 2002, we moved to Denver and our perspectives changed. I (Brad) was no longer a full-time consultant, but instead had accepted an open-ended contract to do IT work for a corporate legal department. Our friends Molly and Tina introduced us to the Denver Catholic Worker house, and we began cooking there every Tuesday night. While cooking a meal for 12-20 people is a far cry from what happens in a restaurant kitchen, this experience rekindled our thoughts of dedicating ourselves to providing food to the hungry on a full-time basis.
We began to get more serious whenever we discussed the restaurant -- switching our frame of mind from merely wondering "What if," to asking ourselves "What first?" I started to look into the myriad of culinary schools and programs in the area, including Johnson & Wales as well as the Culinary School of the Rockies in Boulder. Both of these programs offered the opportunity to learn culinary techniques from some of the most talented chefs in the area. However, the time and monetary commitment that either of those would have required was more than we were able to take on. In the end, it was a member of the Chef2Chef web site that suggested we look into the program offered by the Metropolitan State College of Denver. The program was affordable, close to home, and perhaps most important of all -- had convenient hours that would fit nicely within my work schedule. So in the Fall of 2004, I enrolled in that program and we began the first major step of many towards our dream of becoming unconventional restauranteurs.
Opening a restaurant in general is a risky venture, since nearly 80% of those fail in their first year, let alone a restaurant that subsists solely on donations. Donations, you ask? That's right, this dream of ours was to open a restaurant without prices, and without a fixed menu. A restaurant where people could come in and choose from among the entrees of the day or week, and could in exchange leave whatever money they felt was fair and could afford. We were in love with the idea, but we had no idea how we could possibly make it work.
We both had good jobs working in Illinois, and the thought of leaving that type of security to follow a half-baked dream with little to no financial promise was more than a little scary. Then in 2002, we moved to Denver and our perspectives changed. I (Brad) was no longer a full-time consultant, but instead had accepted an open-ended contract to do IT work for a corporate legal department. Our friends Molly and Tina introduced us to the Denver Catholic Worker house, and we began cooking there every Tuesday night. While cooking a meal for 12-20 people is a far cry from what happens in a restaurant kitchen, this experience rekindled our thoughts of dedicating ourselves to providing food to the hungry on a full-time basis.
We began to get more serious whenever we discussed the restaurant -- switching our frame of mind from merely wondering "What if," to asking ourselves "What first?" I started to look into the myriad of culinary schools and programs in the area, including Johnson & Wales as well as the Culinary School of the Rockies in Boulder. Both of these programs offered the opportunity to learn culinary techniques from some of the most talented chefs in the area. However, the time and monetary commitment that either of those would have required was more than we were able to take on. In the end, it was a member of the Chef2Chef web site that suggested we look into the program offered by the Metropolitan State College of Denver. The program was affordable, close to home, and perhaps most important of all -- had convenient hours that would fit nicely within my work schedule. So in the Fall of 2004, I enrolled in that program and we began the first major step of many towards our dream of becoming unconventional restauranteurs.
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