January 05, 2026
Provided Image/Post Haste/K.C. Tinari Photography
Post Haste is offering a pay-what-you-can pricing model on Sundays. Above, diners enjoy a meal at the East Kensington bar and restaurant.
For executive chef Ari Miller, Post Haste's new pay-what-you-can special builds on a more common dining practice.
"Everyone's already familiar with the concept by way of tipping. Tipping is pay what you can," Miller said. "So we've sort of just implemented this more expansive notion of what that means to tip."
Miller, who took over the kitchen six months ago, got the idea from HAGS, a Manhattan restaurant that offers a pay-what-you-can brunch every Sunday. After he and his wife tried it, he said it left a lasting impression that the restaurant was trying to do something more than just serve delicious food. So he kept in touch with HAGS chef Telly Justice, and they collaborated on a pay-what-you-can pop-up in November.
The East Kensington cocktail bar and restaurant, which is a farm-to-table/glass establishment, is open 3-9 p.m. on Sundays instead of the usual 5 p.m.-midnight, and the team noticed that business was much slower on Sundays. Following the success of the pop-up event, Miller decided to try out a flexible payment option to bring in customers.
The pay-what-you-can Sunday deal only applies to food. At the end of the meal, customers are presented with a check that includes everything they've ordered, but each food item is listed as $0 and a line at the bottom that asks them to pay whatever they're comfortable with.
The first special was held Dec. 7, and Miller said that there's been a positive community response so far. In fact, he said the premise has helped increase customers on other nights, too.
"We've seen that because, in part, someone's interested in the in the restaurant's mission, and they don't go out on Sundays, but they still want to participate in supporting an organization doing this kind of work, so they'll come on a Wednesday or Thursday," Miller said.
The point of pay what you can isn't to give away free food, although he said that some diners have to pay nothing for him to consider it a success. Instead, he wants to expand the reach of fine dining and make the menu of snacks, small plates and sandwiches more accessible.
Miller plans to keep the pricing model going in 2026, though he might continue developing the idea and experimenting with specials. But he hopes the concept will help Post Haste connect with the community and bring people in on Sundays and beyond.
"We're very fortunate to have generally very lovely people coming into the restaurant and part of our mission, Sunday or not, is to meet them at the restaurant, reward their interest in spending their time and money with us with some notion of beauty," Miller said. "We've been really fortunate that the people coming in respond well to that, and then hopefully they carry that out with them and share that with the people they know."
