Terra Bite Lounge | Few freeloaders at no-price restaurant

When Terra Bite Lounge opened this year in downtown Kirkland with its voluntary-pay system, cynics predicted it wouldn't work — people won't pay more than they have to, they said.

Terra Bite now gets about 200 customers per day, founder Ervin Peretz said, and freeloaders are few.

After The Seattle Times highlighted the restaurant with its lack of printed menu prices in February, the brainchild of Peretz, a Google programmer, gained national and international attention. Customers pay what they want, putting money in a lockbox.

For now, Peretz said, he has put off plans to move from the $4,000-a-month space he leases at Kirkland Avenue and State Street. He said he'd like to double his customers — the paying ones, anyway. But for now he'll keep operating at break-even, he said.

In the meantime, Peretz is trying another way to boost revenue. People can support the store by buying Terra Bite Lounge merchandise — aprons, mugs, hats, posters and bumper stickers — through the store's Web site, www.terrabite.org. Customers worldwide have bitten.

And unlike patrons of the cafe, online customers pay set prices.

— Amy Roe