Nonprofit FareStart to Close Its Ambitious South Lake Union Restaurant

Seattle-based nonprofit FareStart — which offers food service job training to people struggling with poverty, addiction, homelessness, or a criminal record — announced that it will close its South Lake Union restaurant Maslow’s at the end of service January 31. The group will retain the kitchen for catering services, along with the cafe Rise on Amazon’s campus, the flagship FareStart Restaurant Downtown on Virginia Street, and the FareStart Café in Beacon Hill (all of which serve as classrooms for its job training programs).

In a time of ambitious expansion for FareStart, Maslow’s opened three years ago as a full-service casual restaurant and bar at 380 Boren Ave N named after Abraham Maslow, who developed the well-known theory of motivation called the hierarchy of needs. The restaurant — housed in a former radiator factory — served lunch, happy hour, and dinner, with dishes that included pastas, house-smoked trout on crostini, and fried chicken. It even received some praise from the Seattle Times.

When reached for comment, FareStart said in a statement that closing Maslow’s will help shift resources to other parts of the organization: “By focusing on catering in our SLU kitchen, we can provide stronger job training opportunities, use our donor dollars most efficiently, and continue to operate thriving social enterprise businesses such as the FareStart Restaurant, our cafes and our school and community meals program.”

• FareStart [Official]
• All coverage of FareStart [ESEA]