The White Dog Café has a mission to fully serve. This means 1) serving customers, 2) serving the community, 3) serving each other, and 4) serving the earth. These efforts are so central to the restaurant that founder Judy Wicks jokes: “we use good food to lure innocent customers into social activism.” But it is hardly a joke.
The White Dog Café is one of those businesses that seems to be supporting everything. A quick visit to its website will leave you almost overwhelmed with all the causes it supports and initiatives it has going on. Just a quick list: organic farming, conflict in Darfur, Living Wage (a $9 minimum wage for employees because it finds the $5.15 cut off unrealistic), racial profiling, water management, urban sprawl, HIV/AIDS, US foreign policy, underrepresented artists, & and the list goes on. There is however some method to the madness, at least in how it tackles these causes.
The Café has a three pronged approach to encouraging social activism and local community development: it supports local causes with events and programming at the Café, it arranges educational tours and partnerships, and it has a separate Foundation. Programming at the Café itself consists of everything from art exhibits to dinner discussions and book readings. A newsletter goes out to customers every three months listing the programs going on in the near future.
In this sense, the Café merely serves as a catalyst and vehicle for local groups to express their opinions and raise support. It also has the effect of building business with customers whose values are aligned with those of the White Dog Café: “they come here not because they are hungry for food, but because they are hungry for a sense of community or a sense of being involved with something bigger than themselves.”
This approach combined with top quality food (and top tier prices) has led the restaurant to gross over $5 million a year. It also proactively seeks relationships with other restaurants and non-profits. The Café has both local and international sister restaurants, encouraging customers to visit women or minority-owned sister restaurants and taking groups to other sister restaurant countries to learn about US foreign policy.
Other educational endeavors include tours around Philadelphia to look at what various non-profits, such as community mural initiatives, are up to. Rather than choosing specific causes, the Café tries to address all issues it can, from what’s in the news to what local group needs their voice heard.
Unlike programming at the Café, the White Dog Café Foundation is cause-focused. 20% of restaurant profits go to the Foundation and its mission of building a local living economy. Its two primary programs are: Fair Food and the Sustainable Business Network. Both of these programs give grants and philanthropic consulting to local and sustainable businesses. For example last year they gave out four $10,000 grants to local farmers trying to move towards sustainable agriculture practices.
Judy Wicks is also the president of the Foundation. She founded the Café and Foundation with the priority of connecting her values and her work: “I don’t have time to do all the things I care about on the weekends or after work, so I need to integrate it into my work life.”
By Louise Doyle
Based on the Susan Hyatt’s audio interview with Judy Wicks, owner and founder White Dog Café and president of the White Dog Café Foundation.
More information on the White Dog Café can be found at: http://www.whitedog.com/
More information on the White Dog Café Foundation can be found at: http://www.whitedogcafefoundation.com/
