Mission Street Food [video]

Mission Gourmet from The Quotidian on Vimeo.

This is worth watching.

It's incredibly inspiring to see someone of our generation successfully mixing passion with charity. The basic premise of Mission Street Food is that every month a guest chef will create a delicious multi-course menu that will be enjoyed by people that line up around the block. The twist is that a portion of the proceeds goes to help various food charities around the city of San Francisco.

What I also love about this story is how the owners createsolutions where many would only see obstacles. Some of these include hosting Mission Street Food out of a space which is a Chinese Restaurant during the day, thus eliminating costly overhead. The commitment/vision of creating delicious food with "great technique" vs. expensive ingredients is also a choice I completely admire and perhaps what made this work where other things have failed.

They serve meat but are also cook many vegan friendly dishes which do not seem like after thoughts.

Owner Anthony Myint has also opened Mission Burger (out of a Vietnamese grocery) which he says provides a more scalable example of the intersection between charity and money making.

While the idea of donating sales proceeds to charitable causes isn’t necessarily new, what’s impressive about Mission Street Food is that it’s taken place in the dining world, where profit margins are notoriously hard to come by even with the most established restaurants and competition is cutthroat. Mission Street Food has succeeded as a foodie destination and business in spite of (or perhaps because of) its charitable roots, proving that it’s possible to be a successful small local business with a great product while giving back directly to the community in a real, meaningful way.

http://blog.missionstreetfood.com/
http://thequotidian.org/2009/12/11/foodies-on-a-mission/