Stars often give back. But rocker Jon Bon Jovi has come up with an innovative twist.

He and his wife, Dorothea, have opened The JBJ Soul Kitchen, a "pay-what-you-can" restaurant in Red Bank, N.J.

The JBJ Soul Kitchen began serving meals in 2009, utilizing two different pilot locations and assessing the patrons' needs and response to the model, before renovating an old 1,100-square-foot auto-body shop as the Kitchen's new, permanent location.

Entrees are upscale, including Rainbow beet salad, Garden State gumbo and cornmeal-crusted catfish, reports The Asbury Park Press.

The concept: To provide gourmet-quality meals to the hungry while enabling them to volunteer on community projects in return. It's a soup kitchen, but not a typical one.

Bon Jovi explained before the opening Wednesday that he hopes patrons will come and eat, but give something in return. Paying customers are encouraged to leave whatever they want in the envelopes on each table, where the menus never list a price.

"If you can't afford to eat, you can bus tables, you can wait tables, you can work in the kitchen as a dishwasher or sous chef," he said. Or you can volunteer elsewhere and earn a certificate good for a meal at The Soul Kitchen. "If you come in and say, 'I'm hungry,' we'll feed you," Bon Jovi told AP. "But we're going to need you to do something. It's very important to what we're trying to achieve."