Cherrity Bar

San Antonio

Supporting a worthy cause is easy at this casual bar and restaurant housed in a pair of 1910 bungalows, just across Cherry Street from the Alamodome. After you’ve enjoyed the Asian-focused menu (ramen, edamame, steamed pork buns), your server gives you a number of tokens based on how much you’ve spent. Stroll across the deck from the dining room into the bar, and you’ll find literature about that month’s beneficiaries. Simply drop your tokens into the boxes labeled with the charities of your choice. The tokens determine how 90 percent of the bar’s beverage profits will be divvied up that month. The remaining 10 percent goes to the Tourette Association of America, an important cause for co-owner David Malley, whose son is living with Tourette’s syndrome. —Patricia Sharpe

Taste Community Restaurant

 Fort Worth

Tables inside this light-filled modern eatery in the city’s booming Near Southside district fill up for lunch and weekend brunch, with hungry guests digging into shrimp poke bowls, lamb burgers, and roasted pork tenderloin. Yet none of the diners are required to pay. Jeff and Julie Williams run this donation-based, volunteer-run nonprofit, where patrons pay what they can, plus a little extra, if possible, to ensure that those without money for a restaurant meal can be equally well-fed. —June Naylor

La La Land Kind Cafe

Dallas

This cheery coffee shop, in a hundred-year-old Lower Greenville house, employs teens and twentysomethings who’ve aged out, or are close to aging out, of the foster care system. Trained as baristas and servers, they gain job skills while earning a living wage. The organic menu features more than four dozen coffee and tea drinks—like trendy matcha lattes—as well as baked goods and toasts (including, yes, avocado). Friendly service, high-end coffee, and stunning decor have earned the cafe a following.  —Tina Danze