The Burlington Blind Cafe, is a mind bending/heart opening experience where the audience will indulge in a vegetarian 'Sensory Tasting Experience' sourced from local sponsors and farms, participate in a Q & A forum with their blind wait staff & enjoy an 'unencumbered music listening' concert of original music by Rosh & One Eye Glass Broken...all in the complete pitch dark!

About the event:

A delicious vegetarian 'Sensory Tasting Experience' will be prepared to delight your senses by our lovely volunteers and a local Chef. We source as much of the produce and food from local sponsors and farms as possible. You will be sharing tables 'family style' with other guests working together to get your food.

Your heart and mind will be opened as you celebrate and explore the darkness with Gerry Leary, a blind master coffee roaster (www.theunseenbean.com) and the rest of our awesome blind waitstaff. A question and answer forum will offer you opportunities to learn about the lives of blind persons by sharing in their personal stories.

You will experience an 'unencumbered music listening' concert, without the distraction of visual conditioning, social etiquette & your cell phones! This is a 'quiet listening experience' where the audience is empowered as a group to practice listening to music deeply. Rarely, do people actually 'listen' to live music anymore. The darkness will allow you a chance to go deeply inside yourself, with the rhythms, melodies and lyrics of the music, in ways you may never have before.

This is NOT, just another dinner in the dark...it's a community experience where people connect, learn and grow from working together to participate in something greater than themselves. The Burlington Blind Cafe is designed to help you feel more alive, awake, present and connected to your world.

With the love and laughter of those at your table you will break bread together, building friendship and community on a night you will never forget or SEE! A portion of the proceeds from this event will be donated to a local organization that helps to improve the lives of the blind community in your area.

What people are saying about The Blind Cafe...

"You're welcome, however I feel like I should be thanking you. It was an intense sensory experience that I found incredibly satisfying. The story that Joe(?)-the CCV professor- told about his dreams really resonated with me. The music was borderline spiritual experience because the darkness enabled me to really groove in an unconscionable manner, which I found very liberating. It took me a good two hours before I felt "normal" again, like I was coming down from an intense high. In short I thoroughly enjoyed the blind cafe and recommend it very highly. I look forward to the opportunity of visiting another blind cafe in the near future."

-Tim Rich


"the musical experience was like none I have had since the early 90s, before computers, before cell phones... pure loveliness." ~Jenny


"All of us left fired-up and inspired. If your goal was to engender a heightened awareness and a renewed sense of compassion for everyone around us, blind and sighted alike, then you've overachieved. We left feeling as if we'd been given a gift, indeed we had, and agreed we'd do our best to pass it on. I hope to visit the blind café again in the future and will be sure to recommend it to anyone who will listen. Thank you for the phenomenal work."

- Jon | Boulder Blind Cafe Guest


"It dawned on me that I most likely hadn’t listened to music in the dark like this since I was a young teenager. It was so liberating to allow my mind and ears to focus on instrumentation with no visual input. I couldn’t tell if Rosh was on some shockingly coveted Martin guitar, or some $200 Korean-made junker. It must have been something of decent caliber, as it sounded wonderful, but was that because I was only listening that it sounded that good?"

- Brian Johnson | The Marquee


"My husband, Aaron and I made a date night out of The Blind Cafe and it actually made a pretty big impact on our marriage...I realized (again) how important it is to just enjoy the life that I've been given, so since then I've been cutting back on things that to me are superfluous, and been focusing on what's really important."

- Elizabeth Lehr / Austin Blind Cafe Guest

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Lyrics by Richie Flores
Your not alone here in the darkness
You got a hand to hold, it's mine
You got a friend here, here in the darkness
The night never ends so i've been told, when your blind...
to the truth to what you know is right
We've all been lost, we've all been out of sight
Walk with your head up high, into the night, here in the darkness everything's fine

At your next Blind Cafe experience...separate some cash to leave for a tip in the dark for the servers. Here's how to do it. Set a side a little more cash than you would want to tip. Watch both of these videos and mark your bills the way they describe. Then when you are at the next Blind Cafe put that cash in your back pocket. When you wish to leave a tip at the table in the dark at the end of the show, try to pull out the amount you want using one of the methods for distinguishing the different bills. :)