Der Wiener Deewan restaurant does not set prices for its food, but operates on the motto "all you can eat, pay what you want".
Customers get to decide how much the food quality and dining experience is worth. Restaurant owners choose to trust their customers to decide how much their meal is worth.
Owner Afzaal Deewa at Der Wiener Deewan restaurant
Ranjeet Saha, a Bangladeshi immigrant who has worked at Deewan for five years as a cashier and cleaner, said: "We don't ask customers to pay a specific amount. We just suggest they pay a reasonable amount. The food includes 5-6 curries, rice, salad, some traditional Pakistani dishes and desserts. Wine, juices and drinks are sold at listed prices."
At 10pm every day, when the restaurant is about to close, volunteers from the refugee support organization come to collect the unused food. The restaurant will cook new food to serve customers the next day. Before Covid-19, the restaurant welcomed 500-600 customers a day. Now, that number has dropped by half.
The restaurant was founded in 2005 and is owned by Afzaal Deewan, 58, a Pakistani immigrant. Deewan arrived in Austria at the age of 40, alone and without any relatives. When he first arrived, he found eating out too expensive, beyond the means of immigrants.
"Eat everything, pay what you want" is the service motto of Der Wiener Deewan, a restaurant specializing in Pakistani food in Vienna, Austria.
One day, volunteers from an NGO whose office was located in the building where Deewan lived asked him if he knew how to cook Pakistani food. The man nodded and was asked to cook for a party. "Everyone loved my cooking. I thought about doing something related to this on a long-term basis." That's when the idea of opening a restaurant was born.
The restaurant had previously opened as a trial, serving a maximum of 75 people at a time. The idea was considered risky at the time, allowing customers to eat as much as they wanted and decide how much they wanted to pay. "We were really lucky. Austrians are very honest and that has helped us survive for 17 years," the owner said.
His customers are diverse, from students, refugees, politicians and even ministers. But according to the owner, the customers here mainly fall into two main groups: the generous and the needy. The generous always pay more than the real value of the meal. The needy pay according to their ability, sometimes for free if they say they don't have money.
The food in the restaurant is all Pakistani. The restaurant does not reuse old dishes to serve customers, but all dishes are cooked fresh every day.
Andrea, a regular customer, said that even though he only ate a little, he still paid extra. "That's because when I was in trouble and had no money, I came to the restaurant. I ate my fill and they accepted that I only gave a little money. So this is my way of paying back."
With this motto, Der Wiener Deewan, which opened in 2005, has survived and thrived. Currently, Deewan has opened two more branches in Vienna. However, the owner says that the expansion of the business is not to make a lot of money.
Der Wiener Deewan is not the only place in the world that serves coffee this way. Other places include Ireland's Pay As You Please, Australia's Lentil As Anything chain, and India's Seva Cafe.
The food court of Der Wiener Deewan
"Our goal is to introduce people to new flavors because when I came here, no one knew what Pakistani food was like. Moreover, immigrants like me could hardly go to restaurants because of the high prices. So I wanted to bridge the gap," Afzaal Deewan said.
