byoprojects:

Thank You For Coming (TYFC) is a new restaurant/hang-out project in Los Angeles, CA that will change the way that staff, patrons, and managers interact with food and space. Featuring a collaborative and participatory management style and residency program TYFC will give staff and citizens an opportunity to exercise their diverse interests, desires and skills including cooking for the public, farming, and experimenting with the space.

We hope to open later this spring, and we are currently seeking funding through our kickstarter campaign and resources to get TYFC off the ground. 

Introducing THANK YOU FOR COMING from Jenn Su on Vimeo.

It’s not just our management structure that encourages participation - we’ve designed an unpartitioned, open floorplan for TYFC to encourage interaction with all processes and functions, ranging from kitchen chatter to cooking to bookkeeping. Eaters will sit on one side of a shared counter, while cooks utilize the opposite side as a prep surface. Ingredients will be grown in container gardens that are adjacent and easily accessible to the kitchen, promoting activities like picking and cooking your own foods. Additional seating will be around a communal table that spans the length of the room and a continuously updated display board will communicate the restaurant’s current resource needs (e.g. ingredients, help wanted, money), as well as display opportunities for participation, such as upcoming events and residency openings. The plan allows for easy adaptation and transformation of the space into temporary, and often simultaneous environments for events, performances, classes, informal meetings and other types of ad hoc activities.

1) How does this project make the world a better place?

TYFC is about hanging out and having fun and connecting with friends and strangers and aspires to:

• inspire people to actively participate in all aspects of running the space, providing opportunities they may not have otherwise had
• help people engage in meals differently (e.g. by cooking themselves, bartering a skill for it, harvesting and foraging their own ingredients, or eating with new tools) giving them a deeper understanding of the foods they consume 
• nourish
• be transparent about how the restaurant operates, including where the food comes from, how much it costs, how it is made, and who prepares it
• learn how to cook feed better 
• be a place where people aren’t afraid to come alone
• create collaborative relationships; encourage people to come back again and again
• realize a low-impact, low-resource system through growing food on-site, composting, recycling and reusing salvaged materials and equipment whenever possible

2) Who is the intended audience?

Anyone who’s game — seriously! We definitely want to involve local residents and neighbors as much as we can. We’re super psyched about the friends we’ve already made in the neighborhood — we already have a regular named Vincent who drops in on us everyday asking us when we’re going to be open! He has been a great source of motivation and inspiration and we look forward to fostering more of these interactions. 

3) How can our readers extend the impact of this project?

We are currently seeking funding through our kickstarter campaign and resources to get it off the ground — we need help getting the word out and help connecting to folks who are interested in helping and being a part of the project. A big part of our process has to do with getting and staying inspired, and we are open to all kinds of ideas, suggestions, and feedback!