Inside the Minneapolis restaurant that has stopped charging for food until ICE leaves the city

February is always difficult in Minneapolis. It’s when the nerve-flaying cold of December and January starts to seem like a dress rehearsal. But this February has proven brutal for other reasons. As thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents storm the city with lethal force, many residents have larger troubles than the arctic weather. Some are terrified of getting detained or deported; others are worried about getting attacked for documenting the chaos or for helping their neighbors.

The Modern Times café, a Minneapolis food scene staple for the past 15 years, and its customers have been front row for unrest before. Just six blocks from where George Floyd was murdered six years ago, the Powderhorn Park restaurant also sits three blocks from where Renee Nicole Good was killed by an ICE agent on January 7. Owner Dylan Alverson has long celebrated the area’s diversity with his eclectic menu, but now—amid ICE’s occupation of the city—he’s found a way to use his food to support people in the community, many of whom are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being stopped by federal agents and asked to prove citizenship. 

“I was, like, let’s figure out how to provide restaurant-quality meals for people for free if they’re hiding or even just dealing with this conflict in all the ways people in South Minneapolis are dealing with it,” Alverson says. “I wanted to break down that price barrier so people could just enjoy being in a space and not worry about money.”

Initially, he instituted what he called the “People’s Price”—free food for anyone who asked for it at checkout. Word about the program got around quickly. Going by point-of-sale transactions, Alverson estimates around 25% of customers started eating for free during the first week. But people who could comfortably afford their meals seemed to appreciate the offer as well.

“We were getting a ton of people coming in to pay for more than they were ordering,” the owner says. “It was, like, ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot: We’re in Minnesota.’ And Minnesotans, if they don’t need something, for the most part, they will never take it.”

By adding this new option, Modern Times was providing sustenance for everyone other than ICE—food for those who couldn’t afford it, and a sense of solidarity for anyone else feeling overwhelmed by the ongoing crisis.  

Staff members started making deliveries whenever possible, to people who couldn’t leave their homes to go to work and who were having difficulty paying rent as a result. When the team became overwhelmed balancing these trips with their usual restaurant duties, Alverson blasted out emails, asking others to come in and gather free meals to bring to their neighbors. Volunteers showed up in droves, including several former employees. 

As ICE’s hold on Minneapolis remained firm, though, Alverson became further entrenched in a community-minded approach to running a restaurant—moving from a free-food option to making the entire menu free for everyone. (ICE again still excluded.) 

Post Modern Times

Less than a week after Modern Times instituted the People’s Price, on Alverson’s first morning off in weeks, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti. Alverson heard the news at home and immediately rushed over to the scene, about a mile and a half away from the restaurant, where his wife soon joined him. They could do little more than watch as, they said, agents responded to witnesses and passersby with violence and aggression. A feeling of horror washed over them.

“I realized then that the government’s going to keep killing us until they get whatever it is they’re trying to get out of us,” Alverson says. “And it shook me. I was just, like, ‘Fuck it. All bets are off.’ And that’s when I decided I wanted to take this as far as I can.”

On January 26, Alverson announced on the restaurant’s Instagram account that Modern Times would switch to a free-and-donations-based model until ICE no longer occupied the city. He also redubbed the eatery “Post Modern Times”—adding a frisson of before-and-after demarcation, while also enabling him to incorporate the new name as a nonprofit arm of the restaurant.

Before implementing these changes, though, the owner first had to make sure his staff was on board.

On the day after Pretti was killed, Alverson closed down the restaurant and asked his staff to come in for a meeting. It began with a short speech denouncing the occupation. The owner was sick of “generating money for the soldiers in our streets, and for a government that won’t protect us,” he said, and he would no longer continue doing so. 

“We refuse to generate taxes under the guise of a functioning for-profit capitalist business aligned with government strategy,” he later wrote in the Instagram announcement, which was virtually identical to the speech he gave his staff that Sunday. Modern Times had barely been scraping by since 2020, anyway; now, it would operate as a free-and-donation-based restaurant. Any employees interested in helping out were welcome to volunteer, but everyone else could instead use their earned sick-and-safe time—a Minnesota paid-leave benefit. Either way, everyone would still get paid.

The staff was emphatic in their support. Many of them had been burning to do more for their community throughout the occupation. Now, they’d be contributing just by going to work. 

Never going back

Based on how the People’s Price went over, Alverson expected a positive reaction to his announcement. He had not imagined it would be quite as staggering. 

So many texts, emails, and social media messages poured in from around the world that Alverson had to put his kids to work sorting through it all. Scrolling the restaurant’s Venmo account (@moderntimescafe) at any time now inevitably leads to donations from people in cities like Seattle, Chicago, and Buffalo, along with raised-fist emojis, prayer hands, and the occasional middle finger next to an ice cube.

And then there’s the diner turnout, which has made Post Modern Times jam-packed every day. Despite the eatery streamlining its menu for maximum kitchen efficiency, the volume of incoming orders has been so heavy that guests can now expect to spend two hours at the restaurant—from the moment they join the line until they pay their check. (Or don’t pay.)

“The magnitude has been surprising,” Alverson says. “We’re now under the weight of, like, it’s our busiest day of the year . . . every day.”

Fortunately, although plenty of diners are coming in for the free food, Alverson says the restaurant is still at a point where more people are coming to donate and just be supportive. Although the owner sees his restaurant as an example for eateries in other cities that might come under occupation soon, he stresses that the model might not work for everyone. In the same way that Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want album, In Rainbows, generated millions of dollars upon its 2007 release because it was, in fact, a Radiohead album, the Post Modern Times experiment owes its initial success to having spent 15 years as a pillar of the community.

As for the restaurant’s future, Alverson wants the spirit of this project to live on well after the siege of Minneapolis has ended. He imagines Post Modern Times evolving into a nonprofit wing of the restaurant, subsidizing not only wages and benefits for the staff, but also some form of free food for guests in need—whether it’s the People’s Price or something else. When it comes to doing business as usual at Modern Times, well, those times may have passed.

“The old system wasn’t working for anyone,” Alverson says. “There’s not a single restaurant I know of that was thriving or even making money off of this stage of capitalism. So, no, I will never go back to that.”