Trust Food, Art & Joy

Este café lo descubrimos por casualidad, buscando algún lugar guapo para desayunar en el barrio de Pijp, hacen desayunos de toda clase con productos ecológicos, el lugar es muy agradable, tiene la cocina abierta, la carta no tiene precios, el lema del café es «pay as you feel» es decir el precio lo pones tu! Increible, no había escuchado de este tipi de negocio antes, los pancakes estan deliciosos, pero como se lee frente a la caja… tu orden tomará algo de tiempo… Tener paciencia, vale la pena la espera, solo tiene una persona en la cócina y la otra sirve, mejor no ir con prisas.

This place is Albert Cuypmarkt’s perfect little secret. Tucked behind the stalls, it’s hard to spot but well worth the hunt. The concept is beautiful: at Trust, you pay as you feel, which means you pay what you feel the food, service and atmosphere is worth. The staff are all volunteers, and really friendly, the food is delicious– I recommend the Rad Thai– and the whole place is charming. I’m not a fan of the Albert Cuypmarkt, but I’ll face the throngs for this place anyday!

Loved it, loved it, loved it. A relaxed place with super nice staff and an overall feeling of happiness.
The only thing is, I think my hot chocolate was made with water instead of milk. It’s possible that I missed the detail about Trust being a vegan place? I’ll have to check next time, though the chocolate and zucchini cake was indeed vegan and pretty good, I’ll say.
The place is behind some stalls in the Albert Cuypmarkt so I went late in the day to avoid navigating through hordes of tourists. This meant that most of the goodies were gone and there was no more time to make me a fruit shake. Well, I’ll just have to go back ;)
The best thing about my visit was that the staff actually smiled at me and even remembered I, the customer, existed — in Amsterdam! It’s worth going back just for that. And their bathroom was really nice! (You can tell a lot about a place and the people who work/​live there by its bathroom).

Trust is way more than a new café with a cool concept. Only visit if you have time. Because the dishes won’t come flying to your table but it will take a bit to prepare the food with love.
Seriously, these people take it literally. Did you know that all staff members are volunteers? All of them work on themselves to be able to do their job in a joyful mood. Their goal is not to pollute your meal with their emotional garbage.
Everything is a little different here. It’s all about consciousness. When you pay at the counter what you think your dish was worth, you can get a sticker for a hug.
Call it new age, call it humbug. You don’t even have to believe in it and can still profit from the delicious conscious food here.

This is a strange little eatery right off the market in the Pijp. Their deal is that they serve food not to make money, but to increase the joy and happiness of themselves and their patrons. The name, Trust, is based on the idea that you are trusted to do the right thing and pay what you can or what you would like, always recompensating the restaurant in kind for what you get from the experience. Great idea! Less than ideal execution.
The food is decently good– we had the «Rad Thai» veggie pad thai salad, which had great flavors and textures and was filled with tasty, fresh veggies. The open-​faced aubergine (eggplant) sandwich with pesto and hummus was less interesting, yet tasty and perfectly adequate for a quick lunch. Their iced tea was the best I’ve tasted in Amsterdam– a bit fruity and slightly sweet with a tart, hibiscus-​like kick. The carrot cake was unremarkable– bland and dry. Weirdly, it was served first.
In all, we found the restaurant’s execution a bit wonky. The idea of a pay-​what-​you-​want restaurant is an American idea. The idea has been successful in the US (see Panera Bread) because American restaurant workers work for tips and are therefore typically EXTREMELY sweet, nice, accommodating and professional. Dutch servers in a typical Dutch restaurant don’t have to work as hard to be pleasant and accommodating because they get paid the same no matter whether patrons tip or not. They just don’t have an incentive to be as awesome. At Trust, the workers are volunteers and (based on their level of friendliness, warmth and service) I’m going to go way out on a limb and guess they get exactly zero recompense from their work, other than the warm and joyful feeling so headily described in their propagandish table-​top flyer.
The second reason I have my doubts that this business model will succeed in The Netherlands (without some major tweaks to the structure) is that there is no readily available suggested price for any menu item. It’s pretty easy to figure out a base price for menu items, guys. Yes, it’s true that your restaurant’s highest goal-​set isn’t financial success. We get it. However, there is a difference between unsustainable idealistic nonsense and creating a business that can at least break even SO THAT it can stay open and spread its message. Not telling us suggested donations for each item (based upon your costs for those items plus a little extra to cover price fluctuations, rent, plumbing, energy costs, and the like) is a big mistake. If you truly believe in your own message, *you owe it to those you would help* to list a suggested donation so we can all work together to keep you in business as a community resource.
This may have been a fluke, but in the roughly 35 minutes we spent in Trust, two separate groups of about a dozen finely-​dressed business people packed the place to hear the owner (or a head volunteer, perhaps?) give a schpiel about the biz. Their questions were straightforward enough. How do you make money? Are you making a profit? Why are you doing this? The answers given left everyone involved frustrated. «We don’t know if we’re making money– we’re in the business of spreading joy.»
I could do without being surrounded by businessmen when I’m trying to eat my lunch in peace. It’s really distracting and detracts from the atmosphere. Not so joyful.
Lastly, there are the aforementioned propagandish flyers. They’re really bad. I wish I’d saved one so I could quote from it now. I’m going to go ahead and paraphrase. The flyers explain that you have a choice whether to feel happy and joyful all the time or upset about something. They talk about the café’s classes to retrain your mind in how to feel joyful all the time. Suffice it to say, this is how cults are started. I’m interested to see what happens with this place but I probably won’t be eating here again.