Everybody Eats wants you to come for dinner
Saturday, 16 May 2026
The Wellington kai rescue restaurant runs on koha - but with not enough people coming through its doors it is currently operating at a loss, writes Frances Chin.
On Tuesday night, I sidled through the door of Wellington restaurant Everybody Eats for the first time.
Twenty minutes later I left, tummy full and my pocket $20 lighter. I had been served an entrée of carrot dip, a plate full of pasta and a sponge cake for pudding ‒ three meals that would most likely set me back $50 somewhere else.
Everybody Eats operates on a pay-as-you-feel koha/donation system. This allows people without funds to enjoy a restaurant quality entrée, main and dessert for free. The menu is changed daily by Everybody Eats’ on-staff chef.
The restaurant is also a kai rescue platform, accepting donations of high-quality surplus food that was destined for landfill and transforming it into three-course meals.
Read more:
When I turned up looking hungry and slightly confused ‒ my default expression ‒ a volunteer called Howard led me to a table, and then a volunteer named Zoe came up and chatted with me about the restaurant’s ethos.
For a standard donation of $10, $20, $30 or “other,” guests can enjoy a three-course meal.
Everybody Eats Wellington runs mostly on the energy of volunteers, who work in the kitchen and front-of-house under the care and management of the restaurant’s paid staff.
Zoe used to come to the restaurant often when she was a student, she said. She wanted to give back, so currently volunteers at the restaurant once a week.
The eatery came to the capital in 2020 following a successful launch in Auckland, and currently runs Sunday to Thursday, with the Thursday reserved for private bookings and catering appointments.
On Tuesday night the restaurant was a warm, cosy place ‒ and surprisingly busy for an early weeknight.
The table I sat at was simple but clean, with spotless cutlery and a water bottle waiting for me. Across the room I spied what appeared to be a group of students, and there was a family with a young child eating together.
As I watched a volunteer play with a giggling toddler, Zoe quickly brought out my meals ‒ which I promptly devoured. The food was simple but good.
At the end, I donated $20 ‒ although the recommended amount was $25 (I only had $20. Sorry!) It was a filling and satisfying dining experience for the small amount I paid.
While I thought the restaurant was busy for a Tuesday, on Monday it was even busier, operations manager Jack Rainey said.
Margot owners Juno Miers and Tom Adam had come in as “guest” chefs and invented their own menu for the night. Known for their fresh seasonal approach to dining, the popular pair had pulled in over 200 customers.
Celebrity chef nights were fantastic, Rainey said, as they always drummed up considerable interest. In June, chefs from restaurants Rita and Dilly Dally were booked to host, and the nights were sure to be busy.
However, while customers were great at coming in when the restaurant hosted prestigious guest chefs, they were less great at coming in and joining for a meal on other nights, Rainey said.
While they could easily serve 180 to 200 customers daily, the restaurant was only serving about 150 customers a night.
As Everybody Eats’ model depended on customers’ donations covering the meals of the more vulnerable guests, the restaurant was currently operating at a loss. It’s an issue Rainey wants to fix, he said.
For whatever reason ‒ wealth inequality and cost of living among them ‒ a confused narrative had occurred, Rainey said.
A common misconception about Everybody Eats was people believing that, by coming to dinner at the restaurant, they were taking away food meant for someone less fortunate.
This was absolutely not true, Rainey stressed. There was so much food out there, he said, and the restaurant could easily be feeding more.
“People think we’re a soup kitchen … that’s affected the money coming in.”
While people loved Everybody Eats, it did seem like customers only dropped by on nights were chefs like Juno and Tom were hosting, he said.
“They don’’t just want rock up for regular service, so we need to start giving people more reasons to come in …You can’t just rely on business as usual, you have to be activated. My old boss used to say, you have to keep moving forward to stay still, which I think is so pertinent right now.”
How Everybody Eats saves good kai from landfill
Everybody Eats also functions as a kai rescue organisation. The restaurant’s model focuses on reusing food that many would see as waste ‒ vegetables that were slightly bruised or old, or cheese past its expiry date.
Rainey doesn’t see these food items as waste: “It’s just not as good as it once was. It’s lost a little bit of quality, but there is still a lot of mana and a lot of nutrition and a lot of culture in the food we are defining as waste, and therefore justifying throwing it in the bin.”
Of Everybody Eats’ many donors, Kaibosh donates the majority of the restaurant’s produce; Kiwi Community Assistance in Grenada donates meat; New World Willis St was a phenomenal donor that would drop off crates of cheese just past its due date, Rainey said.
GoodFor Wholefoods Refillery, Volco Bread, the Food Network, MG New Zealand Fresh Produce Group and the Free Store were also some of the restaurant’s contributors, he said.
On a regular day, the donated kai is delivered just before noon. The meat is then divided up by protein groups into the freezers and a roughly planned menu is developed, with wiggle room to incorporate and adapt with additional produce that may be donated in the future.
The restaurant uses a technique called “lateral cooking,” where, instead of cooking an entire dish, the separate components of the dish are prepared ‒ meaning servings can be cooked and prepared per person, rather than en-mass.
This allowed Everybody Eats to create abstract and interesting meals, and substitute components with what they had on hand.
For example, if there were no tomatoes or pasta sheets, a green lasagne with a green sauce can be cooked, with thinly sliced pumpkin instead of pasta.
“It reduces waste and cooking, and it also allows for new interpretations of different dishes in the future,” Rainey said.
When The Post visited, the restaurant’s chef, Harriet “Harri” Fletcher said she had some sausage and bacon that was in the freezer, some “beautiful“ parsley donated by a volunteer, “so much cabbage”, and some carrots that were donated the day before.
This resulted in Tuesday’s menu: roasted carrot and tahini dip, spring onions and toast for a starter; creamy sausage and bacon (or broccoli for vegetarians) pasta with greens; and sponge cake with custard and quince jam for pudding.
The chef ‒ who hails from England ‒ said her ideas for the restaurant’s menu were driven by the ingredients on hand.
She tried to keep the menu “on theme” each night, based around various cuisines and their nationalities.
Wednesday would have an American theme with sloppy joes as the main course, nachos and a dip for starter, and cookies for dessert.
“It’s quite a cohesive menu, which can be quite challenging sometimes, given that the protein changes all the time. But that’s kind of the way I work,” Fletcher said.
The restaurant never had any idea what was going to be donated, but veggies could be predicted based on what was in season, she said with pumpkin, cabbage and brassica reigning supreme at the moment.
There were occasionally curveballs, but Fletcher ‒ who has been cheffing for six years ‒ has learned to roll with them, she said.
“There's definitely some days I come in and I'm … looking at 60 kilograms of daikon. Like, what on earth am I going to do?”
Food rescue was less an ambulance by the cliff and more like re-diversion, Rainey said, stopping perfectly good kai from being thrown away.
“It also tells a really beautiful story … we were able to incorporate these ingredients into your dinner that would otherwise have been thrown away, so you’re not only supporting people in the community that can’t afford to pay for dinner, you’re also supporting this food system.”