This is absolutely classic.

A Minnesota restaurant owner who nixed food prices to become a socialist anti-ICE hub is closing shop, but is reportedly on a mission to educate others on how they can follow suit.

You read that correctly.

The Modern Times Café announced it will be closing after owner Dylan Alverson eliminated prices in an ill-advised public virtue signal.

Alverson briefly rebranded his restaurant as the “Post Modern Times Cafe” in January with the announcement that the eatery would operate as a “free and donation-based restaurant” where everyone would be welcome “except ICE,” Fox News Digital reported.

Modern Times Cafe (briefly rebranded Post Modern Times) in south Minneapolis is closing at the end of 2026 after a no-prices/donation experiment.
Owner Dylan Alverson, who has run the Powderhorn-area spot (Chicago Ave & E. 32nd St.) for about 15–16 years, announced the closure on October 17–18, 2026. He wrote that for the last six years he had been “trying to prove that Modern Times can continue to exist” without compromising its core values (“creativity over cost, kindness over profit”), had “exhausted every option,” and was shutting down. The restaurant had already been struggling financially for years.
Thanks for proving capitalism works

— Mike Netter (@nettermike) October 21, 2026

“We absolutely cannot go on as we have. I am sick of generating money for the soldiers in our streets and for a government that won’t protect us — a government who is actively inflicting daily harm on its citizens,” Alverson wrote in an Instagram post. “Effective tomorrow we are done making money for the fascists that occupy our city.”

The café temporarily closed in July after operating without prices for approximately six months. It reopened in August to include prices except for 25 free meals per day, Fox reported.

Fast-forward a few short months, the business is closing for good, and Alverson has seemingly learned absolutely nothing, telling The New York Times in early October that he hopes his “zero profit” operation becomes a model for other businesses.

Alverson admitted that his policy was hard on staffers and that customers sometimes waited up to two hours for food that would (of course!) be given away for free. The café also reportedly became a hub for drug-addicted homeless folks, Fox reported.

But he still thinks it’s a swell idea.

“If I can create a fundraising mechanism that can raise money to provide hospitality, we can take that program and add restaurants to it,” Alverson told the Times.

Alverson used a more sobering tone in a social media post on Saturday.

“For the last six years, I’ve been trying to prove that Modern Times can continue to exist,” owner Dylan Alverson wrote. “I’ve exhausted every option without compromising the core fundamentals that make Modern Times what it is.”

He added that the cafe will permanently close by the end of the year but hopes to use the next few months to celebrate the past 16 years of operations and become part of the conversation for other struggling businesses.

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