Blind restaurateur honoured

The Schwab Foundation has named Stefan Zappa, founder of the blindekuh chain of restaurants, Swiss Social Entrepreneur 2007.

The jury said on Thursday it was won over by Zappa's "Blind-Liecht" charitable foundation and its innovative gastronomic concept, which involves diners eating in the darkness and being guided through their meals by blind and visually impaired waiters.

The "Blind-Liecht" charitable foundation was set up in December 1998 by Zappa, a partially sighted psychologist, with help from three other blind people.

The first "blindekuh" restaurant – the name is the German for the children's game blind man's buff – opened in Zurich in September 1999.

The concept has been copied successfully 18 times around the world. The Zurich restaurant was followed in April 2001 by the "Unsicht-Bar" in Cologne and in June 2002 by "Nocti Vagus" in Berlin.

blindekuh regularly receives requests from all around the world for help to put similar projects into practice.