Terces Engelhart owns 5 raw cafes in the Bay area along with her husband Matthew. They had experiences owning restaurants in the past. Upon completing a 30 day experiment eating a 100% raw food diet, something shifted for them. They instantly decided that their new cafe would be a raw food cafe. This new venture, however, was never about food alone.

The concept for the cafe was based on a board game that Matthew and Terces created called the Abounding River. The game provides an opportunity to see what comes up in your life when you focus on various concepts and ideas. For example, if you focus on what you are thankful for in your life, you will experience a richer relationship with yourself and even find more to be grateful for. This idea put into practice became a great hit. They then applied it to the relationships with the restaurant employees!

Before each shift, the employee has a chance to say what is troubling them, what they are thinking about that could possibly interfere with their ability to be present. Instead of commenting on their issue, or trying to solve it, other employees and supervisors simply listen. This act of witnessing allows the person to express themselves, but also provides an opportunity for them to be free from their perceptions about their "issue." It is simply a perception about a problem that can make it good or bad, troubling or freeing, according to Terces.

Employees are then asked to name one thing what they are grateful for. Along with this, managers are encouraged to recognize and verbalize positive qualities in the staff. By naming them, this allows people to step further into these greater qualities which maybe are at a seedling level, but could grow given the right environment and nurturing.

During this interview, Terces says to me, "I could recognize your commitment to the planet. Now I don't have to know very much about you to recognize some of this commitment. When I name it, it allows you or anyone else to step more fully into it." That was very powerful, and I believe this is true. Many of Terces' ideas that have been put into practice at Cafe Gratitude are described more fully in her book Sacred Commerce.

I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Terces out on her family farm in Vacaville, California. This farm is all organic and now supplies about 35-40% of the produce utilized by the 5 Cafe Gratitude restaurants in the Bay area. The farm itself is quite impressive. There are trays of wheatgrass and sprouts in the greenhouse. There is an abundance of newly planted fruit trees including apples, plums, plucots, oranges, figs, and many many more. The farm itself is quite sustainable. The Engelharts share the land with several others who work on the farm. There is no official housing at this time. Everyone on the land lives in yurts. There is an outdoor kitchen, a sauna, and a fresh water pool. There are only composting toilets, and Matthew is able to use (yes, get this) human compost in a way that it is safely incorporated into soil compost. Though they are connected to the electrical grid at this time, they have plans to incorporate a significant amount of solar power on their land.

There is much more to the interview with Terces than this 10 minute clip. However, I think you will find this first part very compelling. She describes the philosophy of Cafe Gratitude, the community of employees, and how both raw food and the principles of witnessing and giving thanks all come together to make a business that is successful. This success is in the classic financial sense, but much more important to the Engelharts is the richness, healing and upliftment it has brought to the employees and customors of Cafe Gratitude.

Thank you so very much to Terces and the Englehart family for welcoming us into this special place. Thank you to Aya, Terces' personal assistant for helping us to schedule this important interview.

Please share your thoughts with us about the ideas of Sacred Commerce. Do raw foods and business based on kindness and caring about the health and well-being of customers and employees go together well? Let us know!

And of course...what are you grateful for today?