A coffee shop without prices

Via the Freakonomics blog, an article in the Seattle Times about the Terra Bite Lounge, a coffee shop without prices.

With its blood-red walls and black leather sofas, Kirkland's Terra Bite Lounge looks like any other coffee shop — until you get to the menu. There are no prices listed. Terra Bite doesn't have them.

You read that right: No prices. Customers pay what and when they like, or not at all — it makes no difference to the cafe employees, who are instructed not to peek when people put money in the metal lock box.

"Does it really matter to any of our patrons ... whether they pay a dollar or three dollars or five dollars?" said Terra Bite founder Ervin Peretz, a 37-year-old Google programmer.