A pay-what-you-can kitchen in Dayton, Ohio
Bring nothing. There's a plate. Meals, a pantry, a training kitchen and a long table — all behind the same open door.
Cook a shift · Stock the pantry · Rent the kitchen · Keep the light on
What's inside
Open Hearth is a neighborhood kitchen. Meals are pay-what-you-can: you eat, you pay what you can, and nothing is asked of you at the door.
Some nights the room is full. Some nights it is quiet. There is always a pot on and always room at the end of the table.
The same kitchen runs the training, keeps the pantry stocked, and hands the keys to neighbors who need a working commercial kitchen for an afternoon or an evening.
Along the block
Every service we run lives in the same building, on the same line, worked by the same crew. Walk in through any door and you will find the rest of them.
Lunch and dinner, pay-what-you-can. Walk in, take a seat, eat whatever is hot that night.
Culinary job training on the same line that cooks dinner. You learn the work by doing the work.
Shelves of staples, produce and bread, stocked by volunteers and open to the block.
Cook shifts, prep shifts, dish shifts, pantry shifts. Three hours is enough to be useful.
Rent the kitchen for an afternoon or an evening — bakers, caterers, and neighbors with a big idea.
Culinary job training
Training happens in the same kitchen that cooks for the block, so the hours are real hours: real prep lists, real timing, real people waiting on dinner.
Knife work, prep lists, and how a service kitchen is set up and kept clean.
Cook the night's dinner with the crew that serves it, from the first pan to the last plate.
Plating, calling orders, and keeping your head when the room fills up.
You leave with the hours behind you and a kitchen's worth of habits to carry into a job.
From the sidewalk
You do not need a report to tell what a kitchen is doing. You can read it from the sidewalk.
Pay-what-you-can means the plate does not depend on the wallet. Lunch and dinner at the long table, no questions asked.
Every training shift is a real service. The food that goes out to the room is the food they made.
People give three hours on a weeknight, work a shift, and leave knowing the crew by name.
The porch light
A monthly gift is the porch light. It is what keeps the door propped every week, whether the room is full or the room is quiet. If you would rather give hours than money, this same form works for that.