{"id":489678,"date":"2026-10-08T22:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/489678\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T22:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:16:08","slug":"san-francisco-restaurant-merchant-roots-tried-pay-what-you-can-dining-and-its-going-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/489678\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco Restaurant Merchant Roots Tried Pay What You Can Dining \u2014 And It\u2019s Going Great"},"content":{"rendered":"

For eight years, Saqib Keval and his wife Norma Listman have offered \u201cpaga lo que puedas\u201d or \u201cpay what you can\u201d nights at their Michelin-starred Mexico City restaurant Masala y Maiz<\/a>. It\u2019s an opportunity to remove the barrier to entry for customers, allowing them to pay whatever they can for a restaurant experience they may not otherwise have been able to afford.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Paga Lo Que Puedas \/ Pay What You Can allow us to focus on what we love most: cooking good food, feeding people, and offering hospitality with care and dignity,\u201d the couple writes in an explainer on the concept<\/a>. Their work has inspired two global Pay What You Can events, the most recent one having taken place in August. Restaurants around the world took part, offering regular menus and leaving the bill for customers to decide how much to pay. It\u2019s not a new model by any means<\/a>, but it\u2019s one that restaurants seem to be reconsidering in today\u2019s fiscal climate.<\/p>\n

Separately, chef Ryan Shelton of fine dining restaurant Merchant Roots<\/a> was contemplating his own Pay What You Can offering<\/a>, when he happened upon an article on Keval and Listman\u2019s program. He took inspiration from how they run Paga Lo Que Puedas. As I reported in July, he launched Merchant Roots\u2019s Pay What You Want service<\/a> in August 2026, taking place on the first Tuesday of each month (tickets for his dinner generally go for $238 per person). The events were already popular, as the restaurant had quietly released the tickets on their reservation platform, selling out even before Shelton started doing promo for the initiative. He\u2019s held two nights so far \u2014 August and September \u2014 but by the July announcement, tickets for November, December, and January 2027 were nearly all claimed.<\/p>\n

I decided to check back in with Shelton to see how the experiment is going, and by all accounts it\u2019s going as well as he hoped for \u2014 so well, in fact, that Shelton is looking to reserve the first Tuesday as Pay What You Want service \u201cforever. Period.\u201d He\u2019s releasing more tickets for Pay What You Can as of Wednesday, October 7. (Meaning if you\u2019re interested in attending one of these nights in February, March, April, May, or June 2027, log onto Tock<\/a> now!)<\/p>\n

Of the diners who\u2019ve come in, Shelton noted that the majority were past patrons. Others, he says, were folks who told him they\u2019ve wanted to come into the restaurant forever, but couldn\u2019t justify the price; when the opportunity to pay what you can popped up, they jumped on it. \u201cEveryone\u2019s been really engaged and excited \u2014 that\u2019s all we ever ask of any of our guests,\u201d Shelton says. \u201cThey very much enjoyed themselves and it felt like a regular night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shelton didn\u2019t want to drop exact figures of how much everyone paid \u2014 it does kinda ruin the magic of letting people decide what they\u2019re able to afford without outside influence, no? \u2014 but he was willing to share this: \u201cIt\u2019s definitely enough to keep the lights on. People have been very generous, much more so than I was expecting. Literally no complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside of the monthly service, Shelton says the Pay What You Can initiative drove a lot of attention to the restaurant. Shelton says the promotional aspect has been another point of success, whether diners can make it in for that specific night or not. \u201cThe whole concept resonated with a lot of people, and it definitely drove a lot of attention to the restaurant in general,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

For some finer points on these nights, however, it is worth noting that wines by the glass, bottle, and pairing options remain at the regular price. (The pay what you can aspect is merely in reference to the per person-cost of dinner.) Otherwise, Shelton says he remains pleasantly surprised by what he\u2019s learned so far about running this style of service. And while he recognizes that not all restaurants can do this, it\u2019s been positive for Merchant Roots, especially for those who want to experience their different themed menus again and again. (Not to mention useful for beverage sales on a \u201cusually sleepy Tuesday,\u201d he adds.) \u201cI can definitely speak to the quality and enthusiasm and appreciation of the guests, and that\u2019s something that could apply to every restaurant,\u201d Shelton says. \u201cAnd I think that there\u2019s a lot to it, [but] I think it\u2019s a great move socially for other restaurants, that people that have the opportunity to create offerings like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For eight years, Saqib Keval and his wife Norma Listman have offered \u201cpaga lo que puedas\u201d or \u201cpay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,16677,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-489678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-san-francisco-restaurant-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}