You Can 'Pay What You Feel' At Vegan Restaurant Happy Maki

Vegan restaurant Happy Maki is opening a new location in Brighton. 

The 50-seat restaurant will offer vegan seafood dishes and will operate on an innovative 'Pay What You Feel' system.

Happy Maki was launched three years ago by Anna MacDonald, who wanted to raise awareness of overfishing issues.

The brand owns a small takeaway outlet next to Brighton Pier. They have also offered its vegan sushi wraps and bowls at festivals across the UK. 

Now the company wants to try a 'pioneering experiment' which will make healthy and tasty vegan food available to those who normally wouldn't be able to afford it.

The new branch will specialise in sushi' rolls, and bowls' made with vegan 'salmon' sashimi, miso and ginger tempeh, among others. 

The business will implement a 'gift economy' using a 'modern and customer-facing, Pay As You Feel till system'. 

Happy Maki believes the system offers an opportunity to 'become more connected in a world that is largely controlled by money and emotions of greed, scarcity and fear'.

The brand says: "The drive behind the business had never been profit but rather serving the community and helping our environment. This is just the next step in growing that desire and hopefully starting a much-needed conversation about money and our emotions surrounding it. 

"When we decided this was a change we wanted to make, we trailed our new Pay As You Feel business model at two festivals at the end of our 2019 season. This was a brilliant chance to gain much-needed insight into how people interacted with the servers, how they decided on their donation amount and how we could do our best to make the experience easy and clear.  

"We focus a lot on the principles of economy and function in all aspects of our business...From what we have researched and our event trials, we have developed the world's first business donation "point of sale" software working with web application company Long Live King and Payment provider Square. This will be made available for people to use and customise." 

Happy Maki is currently crowdfunding and is hoping to raise £80,000.

"We are aware it's a large amount of money but are also proud that we can do some amazing things for an old restaurant at a very reasonable cost for a full renovation,"  they say. 

"The beauty of our Pay As You Feel model is that even if you can't offer a monetary contribution, you can still be a part of our movement. We would really appreciate it if you could share our campaign, by the spreading the word, we can make sure that those who could benefit most hear about what we're doing. You get in touch if you think you have some skills we could use."