If you want your restaurant to prosper, give free food to the homeless. This is according to the anecdotal evidence put forward by my homeless friend Yehuda. Yehuda has been on the streets for five years in Los Angeles and can can't shake a heroin addiction. He lives on small change from kind souls ... and restaurants. Yehuda once had a thriving window dressing business and a million friends. Today he depends on people's leftovers and meals from generous restaurants for his fare.
Yehuda taught me this important lesson when a recently opened, kosher-certified, national franchise shut down, much to the surprise of the neighborhood. The story followed an arc that Yehudah had seen before.
Yehudah began approaching the new fast-food sandwich shop that had opened on his regular stretch of road. They were generous with Yehuda, offering him a sandwich as much as once a day. The food went a long way to sustaining him, and a few other homeless Jews who call Pico-Robertson home.
The new gleaming store was packed the first few months. But as time went on, the crowds became thinner. Eventually, the free sandwiches became less and less frequent. The worse business got, the more they resented him. Soon they stopped giving him food. Within months the restaurant had closed its doors. A successful national franchise, on a popular restaurant block, with special kosher certification, was now a thing of memory.
If this were one isolated case, it would not prove anything. But it was not.
Over the course of these five years, Yehudah has seen other restaurants come and go. The same pattern of generosity followed by hostility accompanied the downfall of all those restaurants. There was one place that chased him out with a broom -- they were closed within a month. It didn't matter that Yehudah warned them against treating the homeless this way. He warned them that their tight fist, would be their downfall. But who is going to listen to a junkie homeless man for business advice? Nobody it seems.
One of the businessmen that didn't treat Yehudah well, who subsequently opened a new shop after his latest one failed, began to see that Yehudah had a point. He started giving Yehudah food every day. Whenever Yehudah stopped by, he was sure to walk away with something fresh to eat. Yehuda said the business was booming.
I went to check this out for myself.
Passing by this establishment for the last six months, I can attest that the place is thriving. Customers line up for food. They run out of product all the time. The owner is happy, and the business, even in these times when small restaurants are really hurting, is thriving.
Restaurants often chase the homeless away, instead of inviting them to the backdoor for a warm meal. We, the customers, loathe their pan-handling when we are trying to have a coffee with friends. We resent them for interfering with our plans to go and get something to eat, and for making us feel guilty. Let someone else give them a hand, I have heard said too many times.
Prosperity is not deserved, but is a blessing bestowed by God. The Torah teaches that when a person puts out his or her hand, it is a commandment to fill it. Therefor it is not surprising that the Torah's economic principles can be a lesson to us all. Generosity begets blessing.
Hopefully, someday soon, our MBA students will learn about the economics of generosity, and restaurants that want to have a fighting chance, will adopt Yehuda's simple business plan.
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Thank you, Rabbi Yonah, for this article.
So much could be given to food banks to relieve hunger.
Rabbi Yonah is twisting the facts to suit his own agenda.
The restaurants cited by Rabbi Yonah did not "stop being profitable after they stopped being charitable". They stopped being as charitable after they stopped being profitable.
If Rabbi Yonah's assertion, that charity kept them profitable, was correct, then they would have never become unprofitable.
Rabbi Yonah truly wants people to believe that "businesseÂs stop being profitable when they stop being charitableÂ". If Rabbi Yonah had his way, businesses would give away food not just to the homeless, but to everyone. Business would not exist for profit, but would exist for the public good. Broke businessmen would have to beg Rabbis and Politicians for alms.
Rabbi Yonah HATES businessmen and woman.
On a side note, I have observed that non-kosher restaurants here in my own hometown DO tend to do better after beginning to show compassion and help the local community in feeding the homeless. Many restaurants even advertise the fact that all left-overs from a buffet will be donated to local soup kitchens or day shelters. Those DO tend to do much better as people want to support their work.
Here is my source: "The new gleaming store was packed the first few months. But as time went on, the crowds became thinner. Eventually, the free sandwiches became less and less frequent. The worse business got, the more they resented him. Soon they stopped giving him food."
As you can see, business got bad first, then they stopped giving out so much free food.
I also know people who worked at the store.
It's NOT TRUE that "If you want your restaurant to prosper, give free food to the homeless." Want proof? Just pretend to be poor and try get free food from McDonalds, Carls Jr, Burger King or In & Out.
I'm an orthodox Jew. God wants us to do certain things, like give 10% of our income to charity.... but that's not what Rabbi Yonah expects.
Rabbi Yonah thinks profitable business are all evil. The only way they can clean the blood off their hands is by giving their money away. That's why he believes that even if giving charity will make the business shut down, they should do it.
It does not surprise me that Rabbi Yonah sees generosity and ethical business practices as indicators of past and future success. He is in the faith business...the business of helping and educating people. But it is still a business. He must constantly raise funds (sell) and share his vision (marketing and PR) and compete (for limited dollars) while developing his product and staying current with trends. Kind of sounds like he is the very business person he is accused of hating. I've never seen it...even though I happen to be a business person.
Just look at which businessmen or business woman have been invited to Jewlicious.
Noah Alper (a leftist from San Francisco, who started Noah's Bagels) is the only one I know of.
If Rabbi Yonah did invited businesspeople to Jewilicious, they'd see a HUGELY successful movement and would certainly become larger donors. However Rabbi Yonah's principals are worth more to him than the financial gain he'd derive by inviting business people to Jewlicious, and giving them an audience of impressionable minds.
(I've known Rabbi Yonah for longer than you, but it's not the reason that I'm right about this.)
"But who is going to listen to a junkie homeless man for business advice? Nobody it seems."
But Rabbi, people aren't reading your column for business advice. We're here to learn about religion. As a person who values the keen observations of homeless junkies, what have you learned from Yehuda about Judaism?
My friend who owned a restaurant for seventeen years did this every other day.
Not only did he not prosper, the restaurant finally failed.
Another reason to treat anecdotal evidence what it is: not an indicator or predictor of results
Also, the food thrown away by restaurants, fast food chains, and supermarkets could be used for the hungry. There's a lot of good food that can't be sold by stores that they just trash. Why not give it away? Maybe it's a cost to the stores to do so, but there must be a better solution.
Certainly individuals helping less fortunate individuals is an absolute, but religious leaders must set aside their tenants and preach sanity that will result in us wanting less stuff, share what exists with ALL life forms, and demand that the global population shrinks in the next 50 years as much as it grew (since JFK's assassination) in that time -- and then reduce it another billion in the following two decades.
Then, and only then, will modern religions -- no matter what brand -- deserve credibility.
Unfortunately: Not a chance.
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf should interest you.
I'm sure you don't plan to achieve this through mass murder or by letting disease and famine run unchecked. But how *do* you think this can be done?
The developed nations who might heed your call haven't really grown that much since 1960. Most of Europe has had a negative population growth for decades. The US and Canada would have negative growth were it not for immigration.
The main population growth has been (and still is) in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Oceania. What measures will they need to take to reach your target, and how likely to do think it is that anyone can convince them to do it?
It takes all you got just to stay on the beat.
You say it's a livin, we all gotta eat
But you're here alone, there's no one to compete.
If mercys a busness, I wish it for you
More than just ashes when your dreams come true.