Jon Bon Jovi's Charitable Restaurant to Help the Homeless Ripped By 'Evil' New Jersey Mayor Who Wants It Shut Down — 'I Want It Gone!'
Jon Bon Jovi's charitable eatery has completely irked mayor Daniel Rodrick.
April 10 2025, Published 8:00 p.m. ET
Jon Bon Jovi was looking to make a difference with his restaurant aimed at helping the homeless, but a New Jersey mayor is doing everything possible to shatter the rocker's dream.
The iconic musician and his wife, Dorothea, run the JBJ Soul Kitchen, a nonprofit spot which has a pay-it-forward model in hopes of helping all types of socioeconomic backgrounds, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Bon Jovi is making a difference in New Jersey with his JBJ Soul Kitchen eatery.
The restaurant – which first opened in 2011 in Red Bank – notes on its website: “It is not a pay-what-you-want model or a soup kitchen,” as customers instead pay for their meals and also have an opportunity to pay for someone else's food as well.
The eatery also has locations in Newark and in Jersey City, and opened a pop-up location stationed inside Tom River’s Ocean County Library.
However, not everyone is on board with helping those less fortunate – more specifically, Toms River mayor Daniel Rodrick, who is said to think the restaurant is actually increasing the homeless population in the area by encouraging those individuals to come in droves.
The restaurant hopes to end hunger by providing customers a chance to pay for someone else's meal.
Rodrick reportedly said: “If they’re going to turn this into a homeless shelter, hell, cut everybody a check and give them a Barnes and Noble gift card."
"I definitely want it gone,” he added. “We certainly don't think that the library is a good place. The issue was never Bon Jovi. It was (the) Ocean County Board of Commissioners who engaged with these nonprofits.”
While Rodrick called the pop-up is “a real safety concern,” not everyone shares his opinion, including Ocean County Commissioner Robert Arace.
“He's saying that incidents have increased?” Arace questioned. “We have data that they have not increased. It is not a soup kitchen.”
Fans of the iconic rock band also hit back at Rodrick as one raged: "The mayor sounds like an idiot. He needs to focus on more important things."
Another said: "Some people are just born cruel and evil."
"This Mayor has been nothing but controversial from the beginning of his political career. He has closed the Animal Shelter, Warming Center for homeless, homeless camps, he shut down an EMS service to a section of town..." a user claimed
Mayor Daniel Rodrick wants to shut down the restaurant, claiming it increases the homeless population.
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As for JBJ Soul Kitchen, it has served over 208,000 meals, with 59 percent of the meals earned through customers volunteering and 41 percent paid with donations, according to its website.
Despite the harsh criticism from the mayor, the restaurant is still looking to make waves according to Bon Jovi's wife.
She previously said: "Hunger doesn't look like what your mind's eye might imagine. It's the people at your church. It's the kids that go to school with your kids.
"And I think that was eye-opening for a lot of the community here that said, 'Oh, there's no homeless people here.' And they look around the restaurant, and I say, 'I can name five people right now that I know are homeless in this restaurant right now, but they don't look like what you think they're gonna look like."
