(coffee machine clinking) - Need a extra caffeine to get me started.

Don't judge me, it's gonna be a long day.

- [Volunteer] Oh wow (indistinct).

- [Host] How you doing today?

(indistinctly chatting in Spanish) - [Staff] Good morning everyone.

- Morning.

- Morning.

- All right hey, how you doing today?

(indistinctly chatting in Spanish) Morning.

- How are you sir?

- [Staff] Morning, Ronnie.

(indistinctly chatting) - People getting together around food is...

It's the cornerstone of civilization, isn't it really?

So why not just continue that and make that part of, you know, part of what we're doing here?

Well you know, Gather55 is a true lifeline to the community.

It started out as a soup kitchen 54 years ago, run by Hands On Hartford, which is our sort of our parent organization.

And then during COVID, I think they decided that they had all this kitchen space and maybe they were gonna change their model from a soup kitchen and cafe to a real restaurant that serves the community in a way that no one has ever really served it before.

When you come into Gather, we have a little guide on the wall and it'll say, you know, minimum of $3 if you're gonna come in and sit down and order something off the menu, if you have no money at all.

We have the volunteer coordinator that you sit with, He sits, he figures out what time slot you're gonna volunteer, what job you can do, what you're able to do.

When the spontaneous volunteer is done with his task or his or her task, they can sit down and order from the $3 offering, which is not $3 by the way.

Our average cost of a meal is around $14, and so all of our meals are hearty and have a full price right next to them of what they would normally be paying if it were at another restaurant or you know, or if somebody's going to pay full price here.

- Well, I think it's amazing because a lot of people don't have money.

Like even myself, some days I don't have money.

So if I can work a little bit to get a meal, that's great, I appreciate 'em.

- It's also the realization that many of the people who come here are really working poor.

They are working, they're just not making enough especially in terms of extending their grocery budgets.

- And when I got here, you know, I'm just living on my social security and you know, whatever I can get.

- All they want is, you know, a meal and they come, you know, very sincere and honest.

And they say, "Hey you know, I could give what I have in my pocket, I just want something."

And it holds some weight.

You know when you have...

When you've been in that position and you know that feeling it's like, "You know what, hey I can help you."

- [Server] You want a little plate for him?

- [Guest] Yes.

- [Server] Okay, well maybe he did.

- [Server Two] There you are.

- [Guest] I don't know.

(guests indistinctly chatting) - [Server] You know what, we gonna lock you in.

Lock, we locking you now.

- [Guest] I bring this to work.

- [Server] Look at him be like, where my food at?

- And restaurants are hard to run, you know, free market style it's very challenging already.

Trying to run a business like this is next to impossible.

And it started out you know, it was a restaurant that you could pay what you could, you know, whatever you had or whatever you wanted to pay.

Nine times outta 10, what they wanted to pay was nothing.

So they were putting out up to 400 meals a day for the first three or four months for free.

That was completely unsustainable.

So when I came on board, I said, you know, let's try to really meet the model of what a pay what you can afford model would look like.

You know you have to have that lean and mean attitude of a small businessman.

You know, I used to tell people, "Listen, don't take 25 bucks and turn it into 25 cents.

You know, I need you to take 25 cents and turn it into 25 bucks."

And because at the end of the day, we have to help as many people as possible.

So we decided to change the menu in a way that would be very efficient.

Still have a robust menu but have a smaller inventory.

So you know, you can do eggs three or four different ways, you can have a few different kinds of salads but still, you know, have the core be the same.

A lot of comfort food, easy, recognizable entrees.

You know, you can always find a cheeseburger or something like that on our menu.

- There's not many places that you can eat like this, you know in Hartford and stuff like that.

They have a lot of soup kitchens as well but the food is not as good.

- I mean, I'm put on some weight since Gather55 opened up.

(Rosemary laughs) - And it was a... We were able to become much more sustainable and while still still having our core values and a core mission.

So the most vulnerable people are the people that we are here to serve.

And we do probably, you know, upwards of 80 people a day who come in and volunteer who have no money and they're still able to get a meal.

The breakdown of our clientele for this model, I would say is about 30 to 40% participation, probably 30 to 40%, $3 to $5 pay what you can afford, and probably 20% full price, full payers, so it's a pretty good mix.

Gather55 has two dining rooms and one is the main cafe dining room and the other is the community room.

We offer a venue where other organizations can come and facilitate things that are important to them.

For instance, every other Wednesday we have Hartford Hospital coming in and they're here doing wellness checks.

We have a music group called Music Moves that comes in and does singalongs and if you participate in the singalongs, you get a voucher and that's good for a free meal.

(everyone singing) - Okay.

(everyone cheering) - Oh look at what you got.

Oh you got the sandwich, all right.

- That's just straight corn starch, no seasoning, no salt, no... You dont need salt obviously.

Dude that taste like a pepperoni pizza on the stick.

- Yeah, right?

- Really- - I know.

- It delicious man.

Those are awesome.

Thanks, man.

- During the day, you know, we're doing our breakfast and lunch, and we're running at our pay what you can afford model.

And then at night we transform the restaurant into a white tablecloth over the top dining experience, amazing hospitality and bringing full paying customers in, and entertaining and really giving 'em a culinary treat, and all the money we raise at night helps us fund our daytime program.

On top of that, we have this guest chef program.

Every month a different chef comes in and inspires our menu and people come in on the first Wednesday of every month and see what the new chef has been cooking up.

I have to tell you that, you know, I've been in the industry for 45 years and chefs are an amazing group of people.

But I joke and I say, but we all secretly hate each other.

You know, 'cause we're all egomaniacs, you know what I mean?

But this allows us to be sort of like this restaurant that doesn't compete with any other restaurant.

And when we allow chefs to come in and share their abilities, they literally put the knives down and come in and have a great time.

During the day, we have a check average of about $3 a person when you average the people who don't pay and you average the people who pay the full price.

At night, the check average per person is probably about $55, maybe $60 So when you average those two numbers together, we're well in that $14 number that I was referring to earlier.

We are covering the cost and the labor to handle the mission and that's really all we need to do.

We need to make sure that the sustainability that we create keeps us here to serve the community for a long time.

You know because it's not just food for nourishment, you know, it's food for the soul, that's what we do and that's it.