Access to good food is a universal right.

Community Kitchen’s restaurant model demonstrates that good food can be grown, delivered, prepared, and served
justly and equitably.

Community Kitchen is open at NYC’s Lower Eastside Girls Club.

We’re serving dinner every Wednesday through Saturday at our pilot restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. Come enjoy menus created by James Beard award-winning chef Mavis-Jay Sanders, a champion of locally sourced, plant-forward cuisine, made affordable with our innovative sliding scale pricing model.

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📍 Where

Lower Eastside Girls Club
281 East 7th Street
New York NY 10009
(East 7th Street at Avenue D)
[MAP]

🕛 When

Wednesday – Saturday
Dinner 6 PM - 10 PM
Now - November 30, 2025

📄 Sliding Scale

What’s a sliding scale and how should I use it?

Good food is not as widely available as it could be, were resources distributed more equitably. Our sliding scale is a method of payment that tries to do that, making the same fantastic meal available to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Ideally, everyone would pay about the same percentage of their income for good meals, and we believe that government policy should one day reflect that. In the meantime, our sliding scale translates that belief – approximately – into practice.

So: We ask you to pay for your meal at Community Kitchen according to your income. (We ask, also, to account for your family’s wealth, regardless of your current income.) We have three levels of payment, and – no questions asked – we trust that you will pay accordingly.

If your income is a barrier to purchasing good, healthy, fresh food, you pay $15 (plus tax and any extras) for a meal at Community Kitchen. If you can afford to pay approximately what it costs us to pay for the food we serve you, you pay $45. And if you are accustomed to paying the price of meals in New York’s more expensive restaurants, you pay $125, which is what a meal like ours would cost in those restaurants. The choice is yours and we trust that you will pay appropriately.

📝 Reservations

Book Now

Note: If you can’t find the reservation you’re looking for on our site, please come back! We release seats at all price levels gradually.

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Our food system gets it wrong.

Food production generates 24% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Routine overuse of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics drives pollution, decreased biodiversity, nitrogen runoff, and widespread health problems. The brunt of this damage is borne by BIPOC and marginalized populations in the US and around the world.

Nearly 70% of restaurant workers in the United States — mostly women, immigrants, BIPOC and marginalized populations — earn less than $15 per hour. Harassment, unpaid overtime, and unpredictable schedules predominate.

Diet-related and preventable chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer cause 678,000 deaths each year in the United States alone. These diseases disproportionately affect BIPOC and marginalized communities.

For the majority of Americans, nutritious food is difficult to find and afford. 19 million Americans, most of them from BIPOC and marginalized populations, live in areas with limited access to affordable, nutritious food. More than 60% of all calories are in ultraprocessed foods.

But we can reimagine it.

We support local, marginalized farmers who use agroecological practices, minimizing impact on the environment and maximizing flavor and seasonality.

We pay workers a dignified living wage, with full benefits and a reliable schedule. We prioritize hiring from our communities and investing in our workers for their future success.

We prepare top-quality food from scratch that appeals to all members of our communities, using primarily local and seasonal ingredients.

We are creating an innovative sliding scale to make our food affordable to everyone. We’ll make that sliding scale scheme open source to help advance the growing public restaurant sector.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

— Buckminster Fuller

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Community Kitchen is a meeting place for neighbors and friends. Together with community members, we are building a space where diversity, equity, and dignity are norms, not exceptions.

Long term goals.

Community Kitchen’s impact on workers, farmers, climate, and food security is amplified by a multi-pronged approach to supporting the Public Restaurant movement.

We’ll provide financial and operational support to organizations and communities replicating our model around the country and the world.

Community Kitchen will have a profound impact on its community, team, farmers, and the environment.

We’ll work with trusted partners to open new branches of Community Kitchen, first in NYC and then around the country.

We’ll assert universal access to good food as a human right, and advocate for local and national policy that funds the establishment of Public Restaurants nationally.

We’ll work with sister organizations worldwide to grow the burgeoning movement to establish public restaurants.

Let’s talk!

Interested in joining the Community Kitchen team, partnering with us, or supporting our ongoing work? Submit this form to get in touch.

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We’re part of the growing Public Restaurant movement.

Community Kitchen is collaborating with world-class partners to maximize our impact, centering justice and equity in all we do.

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