At three Denver-area restaurants, there's one rule: Pay what you can - The Denver Post

At three Denver-area restaurants, there's one rule: Pay what you can - The Denver Post

One of them, shiny and scrubbed, shares a hallway and a bathroom with an Englewood Starbucks. Another, in a historic stretch of northwest Denver, has mismatched china and a certain coziness. At the third, on a gritty stretch of East Colfax in Denver, you might see a diner finish a meal and then start cleaning windows.

All three are restaurants, but it's not the food that sets them apart.

It's their ideals.

Thanksgiving comes once a year for most of us, but the holiday's spirit — embrace generosity, give thanks — is the very foundation of each of these restaurants, where all can sit down and eat, even if their wallets are empty.

The three nonprofit restaurants — two opened this year —

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depend on the generosity of diners who are willing to pay a little more to cover the bowls of stew and plates of eggs of fellow patrons who can pay only a little or nothing.

"We have found $100 bills in the donation box," said Cathy Matthews, 45, one of the founders of Cafe 180, which opened at the end of July. "One person came in with a box of pennies. It's not the amount that matters."

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