Spirit in Action

Unexpected Journey of an Activist Entrepreneur and Local-Economy Pioneer

Judy Wicks is author of Good Morning, Beautiful Business: The Unexpected Journey of an Activist Entrepreneur and Local-Economy Pioneer and was owner of the White Dog Cafe in Philly for almost 30 years, pioneering business that was engaged, transformational, community-building, fun, and successful. On the cutting edge of local food, organic, humane, politically-involved, food & business.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 29 Jun 2014
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - Over the centuries, there've been a number of revolutions in the way business has been thought of and carried out. And the recent evolution has included a growing awareness, in some parts at least, that local, sustainable, and socially responsible business is an important, perhaps essential way of conducting commerce. At the forefront of that evolution and experiment has been a Philadelphia restaurant, the white dog cafe with Judy Wicks at the helm. Judy has written the compelling story, both of her life and especially, of her trip through the learning curve that produced a vibrant, inspirational way of doing business in her book, Good Morning, Beautiful Business. Judy Wicks joins us by phone from Philadelphia. Judy, I'm delighted to have you here today for Spirit in Action. - Thank you, Mark, good to be here. - My wife sometimes acts as an impromptu screener for the books that I receive, just like she did in this case. She picked up your book when I brought it home, started reading it and she couldn't stop. Good Morning, Beautiful Business is a great book. It's wonderful for all the personal stories that you share and it's great for all the information that you share about running a business. You've really written a compelling, interesting, and helpful book and people who read it will be both, I think happier and they'll be more knowledgeable. So thank you for doing that. - Well, thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. - Well, let's cover a number of the topics in the book. I'm gonna go kind of sequentially through your book because I do think that you build layers upon layers that lead us to, I guess, valuing business. So I'll start with that observation. I think on the left, there's a general disdain or disrepute for business in general. Was that your impression starting out? - Starting out as a business person, yes. Not right away, but as I started to attend various community meetings, organizing a peace march or what have you, I noticed that, first of all, I was usually the only business person present. And secondly, that there was always this kind of derogatory talk about business people or business in general, which kind of upset me and continues to worry me because I think that's a problem with the left, that even in our movement for local economies, some communities organize to build a new economy, which is a really great idea, but they don't involve the business community. They think they can change their economy without involving business. And so many times, I'll find, especially, kind of young hipster types, not now, but when I was also young myself, but they would say, how can you charge so much at your restaurant? We can't afford to come. Yet they don't understand that the only way you can afford to pay a living wage to your employees and buy renewable energy and buy organic, fair trade, humane food supplies is to charge what it takes to cover all those expenses. And if they get something cheap at McDonald's, it's because they're buying cheap meat and they don't pay their workers much and they don't use renewable energy and so you get what you pay for. But it seems that oftentimes people on the left are not well educated about how business works, really. I think that people are appalled by how far business has gone towards the right, not just politically, but I'd say, towards the focus solely on the financial bottom line. - And that's really appalling to people that there's not enough attention paid to other aspects of a business than money. But then those people tend to go too far in the opposite direction and not realize that there's a responsibility to run a business that makes sense meat, you know? And that's true of one's household as well. - Now, you didn't start out as a business person. Actually, according to the book, you started out building forts in the woods. You should have been in construction, I suppose. - And the next thing we read about in the book is that you became a vista volunteer and you go up to Chfornack in Alaska. Please tell our listeners a little bit about that experience, it seems so transformational and I was feeling akin to it because I got transformed in part because I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, this 1977 to '79. Your volunteer time in Alaska clearly exposed you to such a different culture, such a different way of thinking about money and possessions. Kid, you're talking about that a bit? - Yeah, and I think that a Peace Corps experience is very similar and important program if we're only that reason that it helps young people see that there are different world views and different cultures and so on. So, and that certainly was the case for me. I was a vista volunteer in 1969. I was right out of college, 22 years old and living with indigenous people was a real eye-opener for me. So what was most striking to me about the way the Eskimas lived was that they were a culture of sharing and cooperation. They would, for instance, have a, they had a tradition in the spring when a man caught his first seal after a long hard winter, his wife would have a seal party and invite all the families to, all the women to her house and divide the meat evenly between the families. And then anything else that the family had accumulated during the year that they didn't need for survival, they also gave away. So, they had no sense of envy or of accumulation that if you, you know, admired something in Eskimas had they would give it to you. That was all about, you know, sharing and cooperating. So this was a real change for me because I grew up in a culture down here and the lower 48ers were called that was based, our economy is kind of based on creating envy, you know, through advertising. Then we see these ads of the beautiful models or the macho guys want to be like them and it makes us buy a certain beer or lipstick or whatever. You know, of course, we reward those who are greedy and we look up to those who accumulate the most, to hoard the most. The biggest houses or the biggest gas guzzling cars or the most clothes in the closet or shoes or whatever. So it was a real change for me. And it made me see that it was possible to have a culture and an economy that had lasted for thousands of years that was based on cooperation and sharing rather than on competition and accumulation or hoarding. - How directly did that affect you when you and Dick started up the Free People store? Was it that or was it, you know, was it because it was the end of the 1960s? So how much of it was Alaska thinking and how much of it was hippie thinking? - Well, I think that the Alaska experience was really in the background of my mind, you know, once I came back and was re-simulated into my own culture. And quite frankly, at the time that I experienced life in the Eskimo village, I wasn't able to articulate it in the way that I am now. It was after when I look back that I could really articulate what I learned there. So I can't say that my attitude towards business was really effective at that time by the Eskimo experience. I'd say it was more the Vietnam War that affected me and the whole idea that we can't really trust government or large corporations because, you know, we felt that the Vietnam War was about money, but the fight against communism really a lot of that was about markets developing markets for large corporations. And so we were very suspicious of any kind of collusion between government and big business. You know, I guess, you know, we were more, we were anti-business, for sure. You know, when we started the Free People Store, but yet when I was a child, I always had little enterprises, not for the purpose of making money, but for the purpose of kind of making something out of nothing and then inviting people to enjoy it. Like, I'd make a miniature golf course up in the woods. I used to collect scraps of wood from housing projects and paint them and then put them in my wagon and take them down to the highway and to sell them. You know, I had that little, I put on shows in the carport locker and invited all the mothers in the neighborhood to come and watch the kids perform and I would write little plays. And so I was always organizing little enterprises, little endeavors, which I think were in a sense, little businesses, even though, like I say, the purpose wasn't to make money really, but rather to have fun. It was still about creating something with a group of people and showing leadership and whatever. So to me, it was kind of a natural step to start a business and I also couldn't see myself working for someone and same with my first husband that the idea of working for someone else as we looked at the classified, the jobs that were available didn't appeal to us. It was me that said, well, why don't we just start a store? It's really easy. All you do is buy something at one price and sell it for a higher price. That's all there is to it. And so that's not all we knew about business. And our idea was that we didn't want to make a big profit. We wanted to make a living. And so our concept was that this would be a nonprofit store because we were just going to make enough to pay ourselves a living. And then more than that, we considered that to be nonprofit. But then as we got into business, we realized, and being business people ourselves, that a business needs a profit in order to survive, that you need a profit to expand your store, that we started with $3,000 and we bought as much merchandise as we could for that, but that wasn't enough to really outfit the store. So anyway, as we grew and ran the business ourselves, we started to see what was really needed. And then eventually, the profit was no longer dirty word, but a basic need in order to have a healthy business. You must make a profit. - We're talking with Judy Wicks. She's the founder of the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia. Her recent book is Good Morning Beautiful Business, The Unexpected Journey of an Activist, Entrepreneur and Local Economy Pioneer. All of these elements, activism, local, economy, pioneering, we'll get to all of them in the course of this hour. You talked to Judy about profit and why profit was necessary. One of the reasons you needed some profit margin was because you had to deal with shoplifters. I was throwing on the floor, reading about your exploits, chasing shoplifters down. You were one tough lady. (laughing) - It's crazy. - How do you feel about chasing down shoplifters in the aftermath? I mean, after all, this was the free people's store and evidently some people were taking that to the heart. - Right. Well, in fact, we did have a free bin because we felt that people couldn't afford to shop in the store. We wanted something for them too. So we collected old clothes from students in the area. When they left, they would give us clothes that they didn't really want and then we would put it in the free bin and people would come in and shop in the free bin and take things from there. But I guess my attitude about the shoplifters back then was that this was about survival. This is about, we were struggling to make it and we had very little money. We actually slept in the store because we couldn't afford it in an apartment. I tell the story about the purple bell bottom jeans that we only had enough money to buy three pairs and three different sizes. And the idea was that we had to sell those three pairs of jeans so then we could buy six pairs and maybe a different color or whatever or more sizes and then we could sell those six pairs and we could buy a dozen the next time. And so that's the stage that we were at and if someone stole one of the three pairs of jeans, they're one of our profit. So we wouldn't be able to buy a larger number of jeans. And so it was really about survival. And so when someone would steal something from me, I went after them and took it back. I guess the thing that surprised me is that it didn't frighten me. Like one time I tracked down this huge guy and it was at night and he had stolen records and I followed him to his house because I didn't know for sure that he had the records. There was a bulge under his jacket, but I wasn't sure. So I locked the store and quietly followed him until he got home and then he took the records out from under his jacket. And at that point I sprang out and said, "Give me back my record!" And he turned and at that moment he could have knife me or punched me in the face or whatever. You know, who knows? But instead he was so flabbergasted that he said, "Oh, okay lady," and he just handed me the record. But when I got home, I thought to myself, "Gee, what was I thinking? He could have killed me." But I guess I would just, like you say, I would overcome with the adrenaline. I guess it comes from feeling like you're fighting for your survival. - I imagine your compassion for business owners has gone up considerably because of your experience. - Well, yeah, I mean, and I also have compassion for the people who stole from me. I mean, some people just steal, even if they have the money to pay for things. But I grew up in a community where some of them are in small town, very homogeneous, and they really weren't poor people per se. I mean, people were sort of middle class, or ranging from working class to upper middle class. But everybody was pretty much equal in terms of financial status in the small town, in that there was no extreme poverty. So one of the things that was an eye-opener to me when I moved into a city was to understand that there were people that were living in poverty. So I was glad that as I started to learn more about the city, that I didn't turn into, I didn't become hateful or fearful or very conservative. I had compassion for people who were poor because I could see that they didn't have good schools, they didn't have health care, they didn't have a good housing. I'm talking about the children that grow up here. And most of my shoplifters, majority were teenagers. The one man that stole the records was probably more like in his 20s or 30s. And I think that even among the fluent, there was kind of, I remember one time I stole something when I was in college. And it was almost sort of like a prank, to see if he could feel something. And I felt bad about afterwards and I didn't do it anymore. But it's not something that you'd say that someone should be punished for the rest of their life because they, as a teenager, dabbled and the stuff, or test their power or whatever you wanna call it. - Yep, and to keep that compassion for the entire spectrum, as you move along the spectrum, I think that's an important value. Some people don't seem to be able to value multiple perspectives and points of view at the same time. And you seem to be able to do that. And that's one of the treasures people find as they breeze their way through good morning, beautiful business. One of the other projects you had when you were part of the Free People Store was the People's Yellow Pages, the whole city catalog, the business called Synapse. Talk about that and why you did that. - Well, I saw this People's Yellow Pages up in Boston that listed kind of the counterculture organizations in the area. And I thought it was a really cool idea, but I thought it would be more use if it weren't directed just towards the counterculture, but rather a directory of all the social change organizations, as well as social service organizations, in the city, and have the directory appeal to everyone, from the gray panthers to the black panthers, to business people, to teens and seniors and so on. And so we formed a non-profit organization so that we could receive funding and started this directory. And I guess for me, having grown up in a small town where everybody knew everything that was going on, I was fascinated by all the things that were happening in the city. And it was still towards the end of the Vietnam War at the time. So there was peach rallies, there were civil rights, things going on, there were women's groups, there were things like babysitting co-ops and food co-ops. And there was a lot going on in the early '70s that was really part of the '60s movement. Environmental movement was just starting up and so on. So I was just fascinated by all the things that were happening in Philadelphia, but people didn't seem to be able to find out what was going on, unlike a small town where you know everything, and in a city, there's so much. How does anybody know what's happening? So I thought the need to have a directory that lifted everything. So I'd have a chapter in the environment, a chapter on human rights, a chapter on economics, communications, education, and so on. First of all, it was a way for me to get to know my new hometown, what was going on. I'd read in the paper about an interesting group and I'd call up the leader in a separate appointment and go and meet that person and write up the organization for our catalog and get to know people that way. And it was a way to bring people together. And we called it the whole city catalog where the meaning that we wanted to bring together the parts of the city to make a whole community. So it was very beneficial for me to do it as well as for those who used it. And we did three editions eventually, two editions of the whole city catalog, and then later I changed the name to the Philadelphia Resource Guide, 'cause I thought it sounded less sort of left of '60s. The whole city catalog, of course, was named after the whole earth catalog. And so the last edition was called the Philadelphia Resource Guide. And I would have kept doing that that I got into the rest of this and I was just too busy to do it. - We are working our way toward the White Dog Cafe and your important experiences with that very special business. But there are a couple more steps leading up to it that I really want to highlight. When you split up with Dick, Judy, very emotionally, I think, you're on the way out and you don't know where you're going. You haven't got a job on your income. You're driving away and I think you have a car accident like immediately, but you're going, taking snaps, but giving up the store completely. Did you feel like that was a learning experience? Because I think basically the same thing happened at the other end of your sojourn managing the restaurant, La Terras. Either you're a slow learner. - Right, exactly. - Or you really needed to be kicked twice that (laughing) if you don't have it down in print, you're gonna be ripped off. - Right. - And these men are still thinking competitively, not cooperatively or something. I'm not really sure. Why don't you share the hard one wisdom that came out of those experiences? - Well, first of all, I didn't realize that I wasn't going to get my share of my first business until the time that I got betrayed in a sense by my partner in the second business and went back to my first husband to ask for my share of the business. And he told me that I wasn't getting anything. And so I learned both relationships where I did not get things in writing. The consequences happen at the same time. So I didn't have time to learn from the first time. I'm gonna get to the second time. But with the store, I guess it was really more than anything was because I was embarrassed about leaving the marriage. I mean, this was my boyfriend from when I was 10 years old and we go up in a small town and divorce was pretty much unheard of. I felt that I was breaking my commitment. I was breaking my promise to be married. But I just realized that I had to get away from the relationship. And so I just said someday when you sell the store, give me my share. But I didn't wanna put anything down in writing. My lawyer said like the only thing you have of value is the store and you should really have an agreement and get it in writing and you're the boss settlement. And I said, I don't wanna talk about money. I don't wanna talk money at all. This isn't about money. This is about our relationship. And I trust my husband and I'm not, you know, in that way. I just don't wanna be married to him. So I refused to deal with the money. And that was stupid. You know, now in hindsight I should have. So then later when I was a waitress in a restaurant and then became the general manager, it was supposed to be a temporary position while the owner finished classes in school up in Boston and then he was gonna come down and hire a professional manager. So he asked me to run the restaurant for two weeks. Well, two weeks ended up in 10 years, you know? And so at one point I asked that I'd become a partner in the business and I was promised that I would. And this is kind of a complicated story. But we were involved with a dispute over the ownership of the properties where I was living and where the restaurant was. And there was a threat of tearing them down to make way for a shopping center. And so we were involved with this very lengthy fight about keeping the buildings from being torn down. And so the restaurant owner had put the stock into his older brother's name for safekeeping in case he was sued during this case. So he had promised that when he got the stock back from the brother when the block fight was over and we got titles to the properties then we would put everything in order and I would get my share of the business at that time. And stupidly, I didn't write that down either. I guess in this case, it was about that to me, it was inconceivable that he wouldn't recognize my value because I was running the business totally without him. He was living in another city. And I ran the business extremely successfully. And then 10 years took the sales from 200,000 a year to 2 million a year and we were really on the map as a really popular restaurant and I was running it beautifully. It never occurred to me that he wouldn't give me my share. And first of all, we were also friends and we were involved with this fight to save our buildings for so long. I just assumed that of course he would want me to continue running the restaurant and of course he would give him my share that he had promised me. But lo and behold, he wasn't that stupid really that he forced me out the company because he decided that he was gonna get married and that he and his wife were gonna run it. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. If that hadn't happened, then I would end up being partners with him in a restaurant. And that would have been a real struggle between us because we were very different people. And so it was a blessing in disguise that I was forced out because then I had to start over again and start the white dog. Here at the white dog, I was able to create a business that was totally around my own vision. I didn't have to fight with anybody. I didn't have to argue about it. I just did it my way. So I left the restaurant, La Trois, where I had started as a waitress and been the manager for 10 years. And he called me, his partner. I was known in the community. It's being a proprietious of the restaurant. And I left that situation and started over. But again, without bitterness and really either case, I mean, it wasn't surprising in either case that both men made the decisions they did. And I was still fairly young at the time. I was in my early 30s on the second disappointment. And I started the white dog. And I just realized that I wasn't into fighting. I was into building. And that that was my knack. And the building of the Forts, when I was young, I was kind of the beginning of all this. And I'm good at building things, of creating things from nothing and building a business, building an institution and later building nonprofits and so on. So it wasn't a daunting task for me to build another one. You know what I mean? And I realized that I had learned a lot in the restaurant. I mean, I learned how to run a restaurant. And I also was able to gain title to my house, where I had been living for 10 years because of this block site. The restaurant owner was the leader in saving our blocks from being torn down. So I ended up feeling grateful. Even though I realized in hindsight, I had made a mistake not getting things in writing. In both cases, it didn't hurt me in the end to not have done so. Although I certainly would caution business people or I guess any kind of agreement to get it in writing. And thank God I was able to build a new restaurant. And he went out of business. He went out of business after I left because he didn't really want to run it. I didn't even put that in the book, but he ended up going out of business because in fact, he didn't really know how to run the business. But he took off again and went to New York and hired a manager and everything went downhill and he finally closed it. And the white dog went on to become very successful and popular, so it all worked out. Well, the white dog cafe is really what this interview is supposed to be about, I suppose. Though actually, it's about the book Good Morning, Beautiful Business by Judy Wicks. You are listening to Spirit in Action and this is a Northern Spirit radio production. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. We're on the web at northernspiritradio.org where you can find about eight years of programs for listening and download. You can find links to our guests. There's a place to post comments to help make our communication two way. There's another button to leave donations, which are so important to our work. And equally important is that you remember to support your local community radio station, especially those who are discerning enough to carry this program. Truly, these alternative stations are such a valuable portal on news and music totally neglected by profit-driven media. So remember to support them with your time and money and help support local business, putting into practice a more sustainable model for business. We are speaking to an innovator and strong proponent of such business. Her name is Judy Wicks and she's author of Good Morning, Beautiful Business, the unexpected journey of an activist, entrepreneur and local economy pioneer. She's the founder of the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia and so, Judy, it's finally time to talk about that cafe. There are so many layers. The additions to your business design and model, adding to its depth and ethical extensions, making it more and more the kind of place that we all can feel good about patronizing and spending our money. And being member of a community, I think that at the White Dog, the line between being a customer and being a member of the community, a member of the family, that line really got largely erased. How did you come to think about that relationship over the years? - I think it's true that people came to the White Dog not just because the food was good, although that has to be the main reason for when people go to a restaurant just because they like the food. But they also came to the White Dog because they wanted to be part of the community that we created a community at the White Dog to the various events that we had. We had events to discuss various issues of the day that were concerned to people. Whether it's foreign policy or the environment or public education or drug policy reform, criminal justice reform and so on. I never really thought about that until you just mentioned that they were more participants than they were customers. And that's really true because of the events and people would come to Table Talk and they would have dinner, but then afterwards they would join in a discussion about issues that were important to the community. And then we went further, we would go on tours. We would have an annual affordable housing tour or a child watch tour to witness the lives of inner-city children or go out to prisons and visit a organic garden that was run by prisoners or go out to the farms. And then we also had international trips that would be for a week or two. Visit our sister restaurant. We had sister relationships with restaurants in different countries where there was disagreement between the US government and that particular country, whether it be Vietnam or Cuba or the Soviet Union. And we would go to visit that country and learn how our foreign policy was affecting the lives of others. So in these cases, I'd be with customers, maybe 20 customers and we always brought a couple employees as well, for a week or two, traveling to these various places and learning together and then coming back and having a kind of union dinner and inviting other customers to come and see our slideshow and hear a report back. So customers were participants. They were part of the discussion and part of the experience. And we also had just wonderful parties out in the street like annual events, like our liberty and justice for all of our, our no-tea Latina or Roman Rege or remember Bastille Day, Bastille Day. Bastille Day, right, right, which I started that one at the French restaurant where I worked before I came to the White Dog and then continued at the White Dog. And then the Jama party brunch on New Year's Day and so all these things that were traditions, the same family would come in their bajamas on New Year's Day every year for 20 years. And I'd have pictures of their kids when they were like two years old and their bajamas were their teddy bear and then they'd come in when they were like 20 years old or something and show their girlfriend their picture on the wall of them when they were two with her teddy bear. So they really were a part of the White Dog community of customers. - Well, you were also a strong advocate of local business and local sourcing. Talk about how you got into that because although it's increasingly common now, you've been into it for decades. - Right. I think growing up in a small town wasn't influenced there because my parents had a very large vegetable garden and we lived on the outskirts of farm country where we would go to the farmer's markets and we would eat fresh and local all season. And then my mother and grandmother would jar vegetables or freeze them and so that we would enjoy local food in the winter as well. So that's the way I grew up. And when I started the White Dog, I looked for a chef who bought from farmers who that was important to her. And that was the focus at the White Dog, the philosophy from day one. That I guess for me also made me think about other products like beer. When we finally got our liquor license in '85, I think it was, 1985. I decided to buy only American beer and wine. And then eventually I realized that I only wanted to buy local beer, you know, beer that was really made, you know, within 100 miles or so of the White Dog. And so that was very new thing at the time. Of course, now local microbrewers are very popular, but back then, I know people didn't think about that. They come in and let's say, you know, give me a mikolove and that's, oh, we don't have mikolove. Well, then give me a loam brow. Oh, we don't have a loam brow. You know, then give me a high again. Oh, we don't have a high again. Well, then just give me a bud. Oh, we don't have that either, you know. And we offered them a beer list of local craft breweries, which now, of course, are popular, but back then, people hadn't even heard of such a thing. They just knew of the big kind of commercial beers that everybody carried. I guess I just always saw the beauty of small, independently owned businesses and saw the role that businesses played in community and then watched how so many businesses, even the most socially responsible businesses, were being bought up by multinationals. And this was consolidating wealth and power and political power in the hands of a few, creating a very unjust economy and also not good for the environment to be shipping a good long distance that could be produced at home. So that was really, you know, the motivation for me to start several different groups, nonprofits, that started with one just around food to help connect the local farmers with the urban marketplace. That was called Fair Food. And then the Sustainable Business Network was created to support all the local businesses in town and to help people make decisions, you know, based on the triple bottom line, not just profit, but on how our business decisions impact our society and our environment. I have one problem with the book. Is that you made me learn way too many acronyms? Yeah, so I know, I felt bad about that. So many organizations, local, regional, national, about local business, about fair trade, humane food, you kept finding niches where there was further growth and further support needed to make for the best business models, businesses that we can feel proud to support. You talk in the book about the development of sister city restaurants overseas, places like Cuba. Did you have them closer at hand as well, like in New Jersey, or did they have to be somewhat exotic to qualify for that special relationship? No, we actually had a Philadelphia sister restaurant program because I saw that the need for building more understanding within our own region. We didn't have to go to Nicaragua to build understanding. You know, there's a Puerto Rican section of Philadelphia, the Barrio, where most people spoke Spanish all the time and some didn't even know English. So I thought, gee, if we're taking these trips to other countries, why don't we have sister restaurants in Philadelphia for the purpose of building understanding right here in our own city? So we started the Philadelphia sister restaurant program and had an African-American-owned restaurant in North Philly, where we would go up to dinner and then go to Black Theatre, Freedom Theatre, which is the oldest Black Theatre in America. And then we'd go to the Barrio and to our sister restaurant for dinner, and then from there, we'd go to salsa, like a dance club and dance to Latino music. Then we had a Korean sister restaurant and then we also had a restaurant in Camden, New Jersey. That's what we'd go over there to have dinner, sort of a soul food dinner, African-American-owned. And then we'd go to a vent over there. I remember we did the Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman was from Camden. But anyway, we were always looking for ways to broaden community and deepen community. We'd have storytelling in the cafe for giving voice to underrepresented populations like ex-offenders or same-sex marriage. I had a gay couple and lesbian couple talking about same-sex marriage. And this was going back mid-80s until I sold the business in 2009. So we had this programming where every week there was something different, whether it was a storytelling or a tabletop or a community tour or a fun event, like roller bladers over 40 or dancing in the street or a bike tours. We just had a lot of fun as well as expanded consciousness and increased our knowledge and so on. And it was an alternative way to grow. I realized that I didn't want to have a chain. I didn't want to have a chain of like dogs, but rather to grow deeper in my own communities by having all these programs that didn't necessitate building the business bigger in terms of bricks and mortar, starting another location, but rather growing in non-material ways. And that's why I started all these different programs. - One of the layers of deepening of the mission of the White Dog Cafe, and again, the book is Good Morning Beautiful Business, The Unexpected Journey of an activist entrepreneur and local economy pioneer, the author is Judy Wicks, here with us today for Spirit and Action. And if you read this book and share this journey with Judy, you're going to understand so much more about the steps and layers that go into effective, compassionate, visionary operation of a business. One of the steps you talk about, Judy, is where you became aware that you needed to have compassion for the animals as well. Part of what you ended building into your supply line for the restaurant was sourcing cruelty-free meat. Talk about that and how that came about. - Well, I had heard about, as I learned about something, I would act on it, so I heard about the importance of buying pastured chicken and uncaged eggs. When I read about the battery cages and the cruelty towards the chickens and hadn't converted to that, but I hadn't heard about the cruelty towards the pigs until the late '90s, when I read a book by John Robbins, a diet for New America, about how the mother's cows are kept in these cages, where they can't take a step forward or backward or turn around their entire lives. And I was just very appalled by this. This is standard practice. This is how pigs are raised in the industrial system. And so most of the pork that we eat in this country comes from this very cruel system, where the mother pigs are confined in these windowless barns where they never have a breath of fresh air or sunshine. And they're very intelligent social animals that can't even move, and can't sleep in big pig cows the way they like to, but rather separated by the spars and artificially inseminated, and the babies are taken away prematurely and then artificially inseminated again is that they're pieces of machinery and of factory. So I was really stunned when I read this and realized that the pork we were serving in the white dog must come from the system, because if you don't know otherwise, that's where it comes from. So I just came into the kitchen and said, take all the pork off the menu, the bacon, the pork chops, the ham that we had to find a humane source for pork. And we did, the farmer who was bringing us in the free-range chicken knew another farmer that was raising pigs, and we started buying two pigs a week. And then I found out about the plight of the cow, how cows are herbivores. They're supposed to be out on the pasture eating grass and not kept in barns all the time. And so we started buying grass-fed beef. And finally got to the point where I thought, well, I've done it, I looked at my menu and thought, yeah, we finally have a cruelty-free menu where all of our animal products come from small family farms where the animals are treated with kindness and respect. And this is going to be our market niche. This is our competitive advantage, because no other business in Philadelphia was doing that. But then I had my transformational moment. And when I realized that if I really did care about the farm animals, and I really cared about the small family farms being forced out of business, and I cared about the environment that was being polluted by these horrible animal factories where there might be 10,000,000, 1,000 barns, and the manure going right into the rivers and creeks and into the soil and the air and so on, and destroying the rural communities. And if I cared about the consumers that were eating meat that was full of antibiotics and hormones, then rather than keeping this as my competitive advantage, I would share this information with my competitors. So that was a really big step for me, because I had up until that point thought that the best thing I could do was to have good practices within my company. But now I realize that what had to happen was to build a whole local food economy based on these values. So there wasn't as such thing, really. It's one sustainable business. We could only be part of a sustainable system. In order to build that system, we have to cooperate. That was a real turning point in my life, where I started focusing not just on my own business, but how we could build a whole system, food system in our region that was humane and sustainable and healthy and fair. So that's when I started Fair Food. I started the White Dog Community Enterprises, our nonprofit 501(c)(3), where we put 20% of the profits from the restaurant into the nonprofit organization and started Fair Food. And it was our first staff person's responsibility to go around to the other restaurants in town and teach them how to buy from farmers. And we did a directory listing all of our suppliers and their phone numbers and what products we got from what farms and so on. And got the ball rolling, you know. And now Fair Food is 13 years old and has, I don't know how many employees and runs a year round, seven day week indoor farm stand. Then I also asked the farmer who was bringing in the two pigs a week if he wanted to expand his business. And he said he did. And I said, what's holding you back? And he said he needed $30,000 to buy refrigerated trucks so that he could deliver to the other restaurants and town on his trap into the city. So I lend them the $30,000 and he bought the truck and paid it back. But all this was really motivated by my love of animals and of nature and community. All these things were being threatened by these active farms. That was a really important time in my life. - A really central part of why this Spirit and Action program exists is to identify people doing work in the world that is positive, helpful and healing for this planet, work that's inspirational. And you certainly fill that bill to a T. And one more part of the Spirit and Action mission is to seek to understand the roots of such action. Why do you care about this? What is there in the way about the way you see the world and are motivated that sustain you in decades of efforts for the common good? Why do you care about animals, restaurants in other places, environmental concerns, other local businesses? Why aren't you just in for lining your pocket and the, you know, I got mine Jack attitude. Is this an attitude you were raised with? Was it religious, spiritual, ethical? Is it something you grew into along the way? Or maybe it's part of the whole accumulated ethos of the 1960s cultural revolution. Can you identify the elements of your spirituality or big picture world view that led you in this direction? - Well, that's an interesting question. I guess underneath it all, it's about a world view and I guess a spiritual belief that all life is interconnected that we are connected with the animals and with other people and with nature. So when you see nature being violated and animals being violated or people being violated, you have empathy because you feel it. - No, no, you said you have empathy. I do, I've been a vegetarian since 1976, but a lot of people don't feel that same way. Perhaps don't have the same empathy with animals. Why is it that Judy Wicks has empathy where a lot of people don't? - Well, I think first of all, a lot of people don't feel that they're interconnected with other people or with animals in nature, that there's a world view of separation and that there's a winner and a loser and a feminine us, you know, and that you need to dominate and compete in order to win. And it's two separate world views. One that sees that life is interconnected and that we need to cooperate and share. And the other that sees that life is separate and that we have to compete and hoard. I think that's part of it, but I think there's something else as well. And I think it's about love, it's about caring. It's about recognizing what you do love. I mean, I think a lot of people are shut down. A lot of people don't want to hear about the suffering that underlies our economic system, whether it's the sweatshop workers that make our clothes, like those that were just killed in Bangladesh, when the factory collapsed, the factory building collapsed. And I think there's people who don't want to hear about the suffering of the pigs or of the chickens. They just want their food and they want it cheap. They're shut down. And I think that that's one of the problems right now with getting people to understand and work to change the disaster we're headed towards the climate change because they're not allowing themselves to feel what's happening to the world. And what these storms and droughts are doing, you know, to our lives, people just don't want to feel. And I think in the business community, in particular, we're taught to close our hearts that we need to make business decisions from our heads and not let feelings interfere with our sound business decisions. And what's happened is that we've created an economy that's uncaring, that it's all based on profit. And I think that if people allow themselves to feel, if they open their hearts and their eyes and their ears to see what's really happening, and recognize that we love nature and animals and at least we love our children and care about their future, that our children's future means more to us than continuing a lifestyle that's based on burning fossil fuels. I don't know why people just can't put two and two together. And a lot of it is the propaganda of the media. It's the control over our economy and our media that large corporations have and control over our government for that matter, that we haven't been able to develop a climate change policy on the part of government because the oil and gas companies have such enormous power that they've been able to dissuade people from thinking that there is climate change or that there's anything anyone can do about it. So, you know, I think we find ourselves in a very precarious position and it's really time for people to really think what do I care about and open our hearts to look around and see that much of this beautiful planet is in jeopardy right now and that our food system is in jeopardy of being unhealthy. A lot of people and animals are suffering because of it. - You know, I agree with everything you've been saying there, Judy. It's the same thing that's in my heart but my question is how did your heart get so full and open and what made you live out a different path as a business owner? Certainly you're not unique, although you're part of a small portion of the business world working with these higher values instead of just a financial bottom line. And I'm asking you this because I want our listeners to know what kinds of experiences and values lead people to work beneficially for the world in the same way that you or Ben and Jerry's and many others cutting-edge business folks do. - Well, I don't have any magic answer to that. All I can say is that people have to open their hearts and also open their minds and not be directed really in our lifestyles by advertising, I think has a huge control over us and we have to change our major of success. I think that's a biggie away from measuring our success by how much money we have and how bigger houses are and so on to measuring our success by how healthy our communities are and how healthy our natural environment is because ultimately it's the health of communities and the health of their natural environment in which we depend that are the key to our own happiness and I'll go back to the Eskimas there where I thought of them and continue to see them as the happiest people I've ever known because their happiness was not connected to money or to what they had but rather to their community, to their sense of community and that's what gave them happiness and security. And we've lost that here. We don't have the strong enough communities where people feel secure that if they needed help that their neighbors would help them, that people would share if they had nothing. We don't have that kind of culture but we need to have that kind of a culture. And so I see that we need to work in our own communities to build a sense of trust and neighborliness and cooperation, then we need to change our business motorist referendum to be based on not on profit but on relationships that we make business decisions that maximize positive relationships with our customers and our employees and our community and with nature. And I know this sounds outlandish but I don't really see any other way that we're gonna save our environment and create a just and socially sustainable society unless we change our ways to become more cooperative and empathetic and build a stronger sense of community. - In the book, Judy, you use the phrase table for six billion and in this interview already you've mentioned the triple bottom line. These seem to be key in how you see the world. I've heard before of the triple bottom line. In fact, I interviewed someone else recently who speaks of a four part bottom line adding spirit as one more item. Care to spell out for our listeners the elements of the triple bottom line that you're used to advocating? - I mean that when we make a business decision we don't just say how will this decision affect my profit but we say how will this decision affect my environment and my community? Some people call it the three P's, people, planet and profit. That we want businesses that are serving people and planet as well as making profit. I don't know how spirit, I mean spirit is pervasive. I mean there's spirit in the environment and there's spirit in people. So I don't really see that as a separate category but rather part of people and planet. - Could you tell me about your spiritual identity past and present, how are you raised back in your childhood and where have you journeyed to religiously or spiritually in the years since and where are you now? - Well I was raised actually in West from Pennsylvania and I was raised as a Presbyterian but my father actually was Methodist. So it's just Protestant really. I mean a Methodist and a Presbyterian are pretty similar I guess, but I don't see that as being really having much to do with my spirituality because I don't really connect spirituality with organized religions very much. I guess what came from my upbringing and my childhood in terms of spirituality was a love of nature and service towards community. My mother was a head Girl Scout leader in our town and both my parents love nature and our propagation every year we would go into the wilderness up in Canada. We'd go to as far as we could go by car and then rent a boat and have maps and compasses and get into boats and explore and went to a distant little island every year that we wouldn't see anybody else for the whole week we were gone. And I think it was a really respect and a love of nature, a love of community and a dedication to serving, to serving others and to serving our natural world that was instilled in me by my parents but it wasn't ever taught as a spiritual denomination or anything like that. Now when it came time to raise my own kids I chose to have them go to Quaker schools because a Quakerism was as close as any organized religion to my beliefs of service. And also being a non-religion. Right, exactly and not having the baggage, you know, the baggage that organized religions have. And actually, you know, the white dog was named after a woman who lived in my house, Madam Helena Bovaski, who was the co-founder of the Theosophical Society. And one of the reasons that I was attracted to her work is because she believed that all religions had a central trunk of ancient truth that were the same for all religions and that oftentimes organized religions separated people where they really should be looking at their commonality that they're all come from the same ancient truth. So she spent her life and studying these ancient truths that bring people together. When people asked her what religion did she belong to? She said she belonged to all religions. And I thought that was a pretty good attitude because unfortunately I think that a lot of organized religions, you know, pitted against each other. And if you don't believe the way the Catholics do, for instance, you're gonna go to hell. You know, I guess I just can't go along with that kind of outlook. And so I never was really attracted to organized religions other than the Quakers. There might be other religions out there that I'm not aware of that old Buddhism, I think it's also about love and compassion and service. So I very much admire that religion, but I'm not a practicing religious person, but I think of myself as being a spiritual person. - And it shows through in everything that you've written in Good Morning Beautiful Business. And we should mention about that phrase, Good Morning Beautiful Business. It's not a phrase I've run into anywhere before. I suspect that the same is true for our listeners. Did you make up the phrase or just where did it come from? - I made it up. I don't even remember where it came from. Well, actually I do remember not that I heard that phrase, but when it came to me, you mentioned earlier Ben Cohen and the influence that he had on my life as a person who ran his business with heart. And he was being interviewed on TV, I remember watching this, and he was standing in front of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. And the reporter was asking him about his unorthodox business practices and what was at the basis of that. And he said that the golden rule was at the basis of it. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And why should it be any different in business than it is in the rest of our lives? Why shouldn't we practice business with the golden rule of doing unto others if we would have them do unto us? And so when he was standing there, I think it was on a Sunday morning in Washington, D.C. saying this, I just came to my mind, oh, good morning, beautiful business. What a beautiful thought that we should run business with the golden rule. So I did a drawing of him. It was the drawing of a TV screen, sort of the TV around him and a picture of him with a Capitol building behind him. I labeled the drawing, good morning, beautiful business. Years later, when I was giving a speech somewhere, I called the speech, good morning, beautiful business. And that's how it all began. Where's the best place to get this book? I mean, I suppose we could just order from Amazon, but that wouldn't be much in alignment with your local business approach that you support. That's right. I would recommend that people go to their local independently owned bookstore to buy the book rather than a national chain or Amazon. And if you don't have a local independent bookstore, which is a shame, because every community should have one, but if you don't, then you could go online and order it from my website, which is judiwicks.com. There's a place that you can click on to order the book that we just sent to your house. And in that way, also, I would autograph it for the buyer. There's also other information about me and my book tour events and so on, on that website, judiwicks.com. And you can, of course, find a link on northernspiritradio.org. Judi, you provide a beautiful and inspiring alternative to the way business is usually done in this country. Again, the book, Good Morning, Beautiful Business. And Judi, I had to fight my wife for controlled books so I could finish reading it in time for this interview. (laughing) The unexpected journey of an activist entrepreneur and local economy pioneer by Judi Wicks. Judi, your work is such a manifestation of a wide-reaching love. We only touched on a small fraction of what's in the book. We haven't mentioned the business alliance for local living economies. And we haven't said anything about the theme-based, culturally and intellectually enriching parties you hosted that brought so much joy and knowledge into people's hearts and heads. I want to thank you for doing that and so much more. And especially, I want to thank you for joining me today for Spirit in Action. - You're welcome. It was fun to be on your show, Mark. - The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪