For eight years, Saqib Keval and his wife Norma Listman have offered “paga lo que puedas” or “pay what you can” nights at their Michelin-starred Mexico City restaurant Masala y Maiz. It’s an opportunity to remove the barrier to entry for customers, allowing
them to pay whatever they can for a restaurant experience they may not otherwise have been able to afford.
“The Paga Lo Que Puedas / Pay What You Can allow us to focus on what we love most: cooking good food, feeding people, and offering hospitality with care and dignity,” the couple writes in an explainer on the concept. Their work has inspired two global Pay What You Can events, the most recent one having taken place in August. Restaurants around the world took part, offering regular menus and leaving the bill for customers to decide how much to pay. It’s not a new model by any means, but it’s one that restaurants seem to be reconsidering in today’s fiscal climate.
Separately, chef Ryan Shelton of fine dining restaurant Merchant Roots was contemplating his own Pay What You Can offering, when he happened upon an article on Keval and Listman’s program. He took inspiration from how they run Paga Lo Que Puedas. As I reported in July, he launched Merchant Roots’s Pay What You Want service in August 2026, taking place on the first Tuesday of each month (tickets for his dinner generally go for $238 per person). The events were already popular, as the restaurant had quietly released the tickets on their reservation platform, selling out even before Shelton started doing promo for the initiative. He’s held two nights so far — August and September — but by the July announcement, tickets for November, December, and January 2027 were nearly all claimed.
I decided to check back in with Shelton to see how the experiment is going, and by all accounts it’s going as well as he hoped for — so well, in fact, that Shelton is looking to reserve the first Tuesday as Pay What You Want service “forever. Period.” He’s releasing more tickets for Pay What You Can as of Wednesday, October 7. (Meaning if you’re interested in attending one of these nights in February, March, April, May, or June 2027, log onto Tock now!)
Of the diners who’ve come in, Shelton noted that the majority were past patrons. Others, he says, were folks who told him they’ve wanted to come into the restaurant forever, but couldn’t justify the price; when the opportunity to pay what you can popped up, they jumped on it. “Everyone’s been really engaged and excited — that’s all we ever ask of any of our guests,” Shelton says. “They very much enjoyed themselves and it felt like a regular night.”
Shelton didn’t want to drop exact figures of how much everyone paid — it does kinda ruin the magic of letting people decide what they’re able to afford without outside influence, no? — but he was willing to share this: “It’s definitely enough to keep the lights on. People have been very generous, much more so than I was expecting. Literally no complaints.”
Outside of the monthly service, Shelton says the Pay What You Can initiative drove a lot of attention to the restaurant. Shelton says the promotional aspect has been another point of success, whether diners can make it in for that specific night or not. “The whole concept resonated with a lot of people, and it definitely drove a lot of attention to the restaurant in general,” he says.
For some finer points on these nights, however, it is worth noting that wines by the glass, bottle, and pairing options remain at the regular price. (The pay what you can aspect is merely in reference to the per person-cost of dinner.) Otherwise, Shelton says he remains pleasantly surprised by what he’s learned so far about running this style of service. And while he recognizes that not all restaurants can do this, it’s been positive for Merchant Roots, especially for those who want to experience their different themed menus again and again. (Not to mention useful for beverage sales on a “usually sleepy Tuesday,” he adds.) “I can definitely speak to the quality and enthusiasm and appreciation of the guests, and that’s something that could apply to every restaurant,” Shelton says. “And I think that there’s a lot to it, [but] I think it’s a great move socially for other restaurants, that people that have the opportunity to create offerings like this.”
