Jaden Smith has announced he is opening a restaurant that will feed homeless people for free. | Photo by Rich Fury/MTV VMAs 2020/Getty Images for MTV
Jaden Smith is opening a new restaurant with a twist. While those with plenty of money will pay over the odds for their meal, those experiencing homelessness will get theirs for free.
The musician, actor, and philanthropist recently told Variety that the new restaurant is “for homeless people to get free food.” He added: “But if you’re not homeless, not only do you have to pay, but you have to pay for more than the food’s worth so that you can pay for the person behind you.”
The upcoming bricks and mortar location is a follow-up to Smith’s I Love You food truck concept, which gave out free vegan meals to those in need. No further details have been revealed about the menu at I Love You Restaurant.
Smith’s vegan food truck launched for the first time in Skid Row in 2019. The Los Angeles neighborhood has one of the highest populations of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. He wrote on Instagram at the time: “The I Love You restaurant is a movement that is all about giving people what they deserve; healthy, vegan food for free.”
After that, together with rapper A$AP Rocky, he took the truck to Harlem in New York in September 2020. Along with Smith’s team, the pair handed out more than 500 healthy plant-based meals, as well as cartons of JUST Water (Smith’s eco-friendly water brand), and 500 MetroCards.
It’s no secret that Smith cares deeply about the planet and everyone on it. He is the co-founder of the nonprofit 501CTHREE.org, which works to bring clean water to those who don’t have it.
In March 2019, JUST Water teamed up with a church in Flint to provide aid during the city’s water crisis. The brand, which Smith founded with his father Will Smith, donated four water boxes that can provide clean drinking water at a rate of 10 gallons per minute to the city, per Variety. Smith has since installed water boxes in Newark, NJ, and Skid Row. He also plans to bring a water box to Uganda but has been delayed by the pandemic.
Smith’s water brand is also plastic-free, because the son of Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith is extremely environmentally conscious. He doesn’t eat meat for environmental reasons and has followed a vegan diet in the past.
In 2019, during a performance at a New York City climate strike, he said: “we gotta change the world, we gotta do something different. We gotta leave the old world behind now for our children.”
The year before, he told Buzzfeed: “I feel like the younger generations do care more about the planet than the other generations. There’s more information coming out on a daily basis about the effect that climate change has on all of us.”
The exact location and menu of I Love You Restaurant have yet to be confirmed. LIVEKINDLY has reached out for more information.
This post was last modified on May 14, 2021 1:24 pm