19/08: World Peace Cafe - Blurring the Line Between Host and Patron
Category: Travel and Leisure
Posted by: iadams
Over the past few weeks, I have been working diligently on a project for CheckFree, our largest customer, and have spent a good deal of time in a new restaurant called the World Peace Cafe in Sandy Springs with an interesting new take on relationship between server and served.
The restaurant located at 227 Sandy Springs Place in Sandy Springs, GA, is owned and operated by the Rameshori Buddhist Center and extols the virtues of peace and vegetarian cuisine. It's a wonderful place with free WIFI, good tea, good food, and an incredibly friendly staff.
The interesting thing about the staff in particular is that all are volunteers. All servers and cooks you see working in the restaurant are actually unpaid members of the Rameshori Center or are other Buddhist, and often Non-Buddhist volunteers who simply believe in a lifestyle promoting peace and its natural culinary extension, vegetarianism. Unlike outreach programs of other religious affiliations (you know who you are), there is no tendency to prosthetize or convert patrons - A big plus in my book. The worst you might get if you're a regular visitor is a query about volunteering to serve - I think the intent is a practical request for help with cooking and serving duties. Active evangelism of Buddhism is against the charter of the cafe.
When you sit down for a meal, a snack, or just a fresh cup of coffee or tea, you are reminded that the people serving you are doing so without being paid for it. This makes you think about things you don't normally consider..."Did I leave a mess at my table," or, "Should I take the dishes to the kitchen?" You start to treat the establishment as an extension of your own home, and you start to want to "help out".
At Starbucks or Caribou, you have a nice environment and good coffee and snacks, but you're always very aware of the fact that you're a customer and that the establishment is there to make money off of you. Starbucks in particular has become successful because it has created a place for people to exist between home and work (that isn't a bar). At World Peace Cafe, you get a glimpse of what I feel may be a further resurgence of breaking people out of their old model of gated communities and hermit-like existence in their own homes and yards. This new model, especially when combined with an ample dose of kindness, shows an optimistic new direction for society (and maybe business) that involves fellowship and the sharing of common spaces.
tags: restaurants,buddhism,customer, service
The restaurant located at 227 Sandy Springs Place in Sandy Springs, GA, is owned and operated by the Rameshori Buddhist Center and extols the virtues of peace and vegetarian cuisine. It's a wonderful place with free WIFI, good tea, good food, and an incredibly friendly staff.
The interesting thing about the staff in particular is that all are volunteers. All servers and cooks you see working in the restaurant are actually unpaid members of the Rameshori Center or are other Buddhist, and often Non-Buddhist volunteers who simply believe in a lifestyle promoting peace and its natural culinary extension, vegetarianism. Unlike outreach programs of other religious affiliations (you know who you are), there is no tendency to prosthetize or convert patrons - A big plus in my book. The worst you might get if you're a regular visitor is a query about volunteering to serve - I think the intent is a practical request for help with cooking and serving duties. Active evangelism of Buddhism is against the charter of the cafe.
When you sit down for a meal, a snack, or just a fresh cup of coffee or tea, you are reminded that the people serving you are doing so without being paid for it. This makes you think about things you don't normally consider..."Did I leave a mess at my table," or, "Should I take the dishes to the kitchen?" You start to treat the establishment as an extension of your own home, and you start to want to "help out".
At Starbucks or Caribou, you have a nice environment and good coffee and snacks, but you're always very aware of the fact that you're a customer and that the establishment is there to make money off of you. Starbucks in particular has become successful because it has created a place for people to exist between home and work (that isn't a bar). At World Peace Cafe, you get a glimpse of what I feel may be a further resurgence of breaking people out of their old model of gated communities and hermit-like existence in their own homes and yards. This new model, especially when combined with an ample dose of kindness, shows an optimistic new direction for society (and maybe business) that involves fellowship and the sharing of common spaces.
tags: restaurants,buddhism,customer, service
