Eat Justice: Mecha Noodle Bar Creates Program To Help the CT Community & Promote Caring

“Profit matters, but people matter more.”

That’s the motto of Tony Pham, owner of Mecha Noodle Bar. It also happens to be the guiding principle of Eat Justice, an initiative created by Pham alongside co-founder Richard Reyes. The project involves a network of Connecticut businesses who turn portions of revenue into monthly donations to local and international nonprofit organizations. “But it’s more than just a check,” Pham tells me. “We’re trying to create a movement.”

The Eat Justice model is fairly simple: businesses designate a selection of goods to serve as their Eat Justice ‘fundraisers.’ They then raise the price of these goods by just fifty cents, and, for each one purchased, they reserve that extra fifty cents for a monthly donation. For example, at Mecha Noodle Bar, each purchase of a ramen dish increases the restaurant’s Eat Justice funds by fifty cents. While customers barely notice the fifty cent price difference, by the end of the month, Mecha regularly raises nearly $20,000 for charity. Pham points out that, by baking the donation into the price of a menu item, Eat Justice avoids the awkwardness and ineffectiveness of directly asking consumers to donate towards a cause.

This model has allowed Mecha, Mariposa, and a handful of other businesses to significantly benefit their communities for years now. Yet Tony and Richard recently realized that, without a sustained effort at spreading Eat Justice’s reach, they were limiting its impact. Pham explains, “the past four or five years… we were just handing over a check, but there was no impact — no engagement with our staff or community.  It was a check and that was it. We never saw it again. To really make it a movement, and then see it in the community — see what the impact is — that’s huge, that’s what it’s about.”

They started by encouraging their employees to suggest nonprofits to which the Eat Justice funds would be sent. “I want the staff to care about more than just the four walls of the restaurant,” says Pham. And this wish was quickly fulfilled, as Pham noticed his workers become more engaged and enthusiastic about their jobs. Showing employees that their work benefits a worthy cause naturally builds a better restaurant environment, results in more passionate work, and, as Pham puts it, “builds better humans within our restaurant.” “Anyone can write a check,” he says, “and that’s part of it, but the bigger part is building the culture.”

This enthusiasm doesn’t stop at Pham’s employees. He himself has become more enthusiastic and driven thanks to Mecha’s charitable endeavors. In fact, he views Eat Justice as the main motivation for the restaurant’s success. As the noodle bar prepares to expands the country, he reflects that its philanthropy “is the biggest part of the reason we want to grow Mecha.” He hopes that the Eat Justice idea will spread rapidly in Massachusetts, where he envisions Mecha inspiring a chain of fifteen to twenty restaurants to take up the Eat Justice cause in order to benefit nonprofits there.

Pham and Reyes have also begun utilizing online tools in order to spread the message of Eat Justice, with a goal of inspiring other business owners to “do what they can to give back, [because] then it becomes a movement.” Working with various production companies, the duo has put out regular newsletters and social media posts focused on “tell[ing] the stories of Eat Justice” in an effort to convince other owners, leaders, and entrepreneurs to build it within their business model.

Pham and Reyes find confidence in the ease with which any business can get involved with Eat Justice. “Even if you’re a pizza shop [who’s] adding on fifty cents, at the end of the month, that’s a significant amount of money. And if you can really get your staff involved, you’re gonna build a better business.” The duo knows that, once they demonstrate how easy it is for businesses to adopt the Eat Justice model, in tandem with the importance of its purpose, there will be little preventing a cascade of new participants signing up.

One story that Pham tells as a testament to Eat Justice’s mission is of a recent encounter that served as a “sign that [he’s] on the right path.” Mecha’s December Eat Justice campaign resulted in a $17,000 donation to Intempo, a Stamford organization that provides music lessons to underprivileged children. A few months later, while dining in Stamford with the manager of Mecha’s local location, Pham was approached by a waitress who noticed the manager’s Mecha shirt. Filled with gratitude, she explained how her daughter takes lessons at Intempo, and how Mecha’s donation invaluably benefited the organization. To Pham, moments like these “confirm that [he is] going to make a difference by doing this,” and he hopes that sharing them will inspire other entrepreneurs to make similar impacts.

“The restaurant industry gets a bad rap because it’s not a glamorous job,” closes Pham. “We’re making it glamorous by doing this. We’re making it noble.”

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