Restaurant in Tokyo only hires people with dementia, giving a unique dining experience

What is the first expectation you have when you are dining in a restaurant? To have your order served right. However, at the "Restaurant of Mistaken Orders" in Tokyo, you can expect a unique experience. This one-of-a-kind pop-up restaurant is fully staffed by individuals who have been diagnosed with and are living with dementia.

So, it is probable that they may or may not get the order right. The first of these pop-ups opened up in 2017 when a tweet by someone went viral and the official launch event in September became even more popular. "The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders" has also collaborated with other diners around the city. As for the word "mistaken", people dining assume that the meals delivered might be wrong. as per the Modern Met. 

However, these meals are still exceptionally delicious. In a short video about the restaurant, 37 percent of the orders were delivered wrong but 99 percent of the customers were happy. The restaurant's producer, Shiro Oguni said that this initiative might lead to more awareness about dementia.

As 35 million people in this world live with dementia and the numbers might even increase by 115 million by the year 2050. “We want to change society to become more caring and easy-going,” he says in the video. “So dementia or no dementia, we can live together in harmony. Dementia is so widely misunderstood. People believe you can’t do anything for yourself and the condition will often mean complete isolation from society”.

In another interesting story about a diner, Collin Doran, a 53-year-old owner of the Homemade Cafe in Berkeley, California, which he founded in 2011, observed that shelterless people often stood in front of his cafe and begged customers for food or money. Seeing people hungry outside his cafe made him feel sorrowful, which led him to come up with a simple helpful solution. He decided to serve a free two-egg breakfast, no questions asked, reported The Washington Post.

His offer is still valid after serving twelve years and thousands of free breakfasts. Doran's customers are now pitching in to keep the free breakfasts coming.

Since January, Doran has posted a "free meal" ticket on a bulletin board in his diner for every $5 donated by a customer, which can be used by anyone who is hungry, reported Berkeley Side. He estimates that $5 will cover the cost of a "eggs any way" breakfast, which includes potatoes, toast, and coffee.

"Instead of ushering people away, I told them, 'If you're hungry, let us know and we'll feed you.' Right away, people started taking me up on it. My customers raised more than $30,000 for the restaurant through a GoFundMe I started last fall when we were struggling financially," Doran said, sharing that he had depleted his $200,000 savings account to keep his employees paid for two years during the pandemic.

"It became clear to me that the reason customers wanted to help was because they'd seen how we'd fed people in the community over the years. People didn't want to lose that. It made sense to continue to provide them with a way to chip in. But on days when we run out of tickets, we keep serving free meals anyway," he added.