How Limited Resources Have Always Sparked Community and Connection

An old European folktale tells the story of stone soup. A stranger arrives in a village, bringing nothing but an empty pot. He asks the locals for some food, but they say they have none to spare. Undeterred, the traveller fills his pot with water from a nearby stream, drops in a single stone, and places the pot over a fire. Curious, the villagers begin to drift over to the warming pot, asking what he is making. “Stone soup,” replies the stranger. “You’ve never had it? It’s delicious. The only thing that would make it even better is an onion.” Eager to sample the unfamiliar soup, one villager runs off and comes back with an onion. As more villagers begin to circle the pot, intrigued, the stranger casually mentions more ingredients that would help the soup reach its full flavour potential. Soon, villagers are running to their homes and carrying back carrots, potatoes, cabbage, butter, even meat. At last, the soup is ready, the stone quietly removed. Traveller and villagers eat together, sharing what has become a successful group effort — creating community in the process. 

Variations of this parable appear in cultures across Europe, illustrating something that has been omnipresent throughout our wider human history. Despite the few who are driven to hoard almost unimaginable wealth, we are highly social creatures, and altruism has formed a core part of our survival strategy throughout our evolution.  

This propensity is best illustrated today by small, rural and Indigenous communities. For example, Port Heiden on the Alaskan coastline would not be defined as a wealthy town by standard economic metrics, with subsistence farming and fishing a way of life for many inhabitants, but local culture revolves heavily around sharing the resources they have, such as salmon — and they are rich in social connection as a result. As explained in this article from Hakai magazine, “each act of sharing [...] serves an additional purpose. It gives a reason to check in with those who can’t fish themselves and to ensure they have everything else they need […] Together, these interactions keep families and community members connected and thriving even during times of duress — providing support that’s just as essential to human survival as food.” 

For the vast majority of people, our natural instinct is to pool resources, especially in times of scarcity. Since our earliest days sharing the day’s haul around a Palaeolithic fire, this has sparked creativity and formed new traditions around the world, strengthening community bonds in the process.

Perhaps stone soup’s closest relative in real life is Chinese hotpot. Hotpot is more than a meal; it’s a cherished ritual that boosts social connection. Unlike most other meal experiences, preparation happens right at the table. A pot of flavoursome, savoury broth is heated and kept at a simmer over a heat source at the centre of the dining table. With a spread of ingredients on offer, each person selects their own and cooks each piece in the broth. Gathering around this shared pot to cook and eat together bolsters social bonds, fostering a sense of community and casting echoes back to that ancient open fire. 

Residual heat and community ovens 

It’s not all about soup; take pommes boulangère, for example, a delicious dish born out of necessity. In rural France in the 1700s, most people did not have their own ovens at home. Once the local bakeries had finished their work for the day, the women of the village would make clever use of the residual heat left as the ovens cooled. They would layer potatoes, onions and herbs into gratin dishes, pour over some stock, and then leave these dishes to cook slowly in the cooling ovens. Hours later, they would return to pick up their finished pommes boulangère — literally “potatoes cooked baker's style”. While the potatoes were destined to end up in individual households, the shared oven provided a regular social touchpoint and a chance to connect with the neighbours. 

Since at least the 12th century, many rural communities across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa shared central wood-fired ovens. Each family would mark their loaves with a distinctive pattern, allowing them to identify their finished bread among the many others. The village oven provided more than a means of feeding the family; it was also a focal point, the true heart of the community — a place where locals were guaranteed to find someone with whom they could connect, swap news and satiate their social appetites. In Portugal, these ovens were typically community property; in France, local landowners charged a fee for their use on specified baking days. In some Italian communities, some of these ovens are still in use today, while others have been reinstated. 

Communal brewing 

People have been brewing some form of beer for at least 10,000 years, and possibly longer. In much of the world, for much of our history, beer was a safer option than untreated water, and provided an important source of calories. In what is now southern Iraq, the ancient Sumerians made beer as a way of using up leftover bread — scarcity being the mother of invention. Etched into a clay tablet, one recipe is written as a poem to the goddess of beer. "Ninkasi, it is you who handle [the] dough with a big shovel, mixing, in a pit, the beerbread with sweet aromatics. It is you who bake the beerbread in the big oven, and put in order the piles of hulled grain." Some modern breweries have returned to this method, utilising surplus bread to make craft beer. 

Brewing has long been intertwined with the very concept of community. A wonderful example is Zoiglbier, a Bavarian brewing tradition in which non-professional brewers share one brewhouse, the Kommunbrauhaus. Between 1415 and 1522, the inhabitants of five small towns in this region were granted the right — the Zoiglbraurecht — to brew their own beer and sell it from their houses. Locals share ownership of a communal brewery in each town, and once brewed, the beers are brought back to their homes for fermentation. To give each family an equal chance to sell their beer, they take turns opening their doors for business. “Zoigl” is a derivation of "zeichen", the German word for sign, referring to the sign that each family hangs outside to signal that their beer is available.  

Not only is Zoiglbier still being brewed today, it’s even inspiring other set-ups. In Belgium, Founder of Brasserie Witloof, Thomas Detourbe, took inspiration from Zoigl and contacted four other local microbreweries with a simple proposal to open a brewery where they could all share the space and equipment. Easing the financial burden of opening a brewery, this ‘CoHop’ has allowed all five businesses to thrive, offering a fantastic modern-day example of community collaboration in practice. 

Public baths 

Scarcity has also inspired new communal spaces outside of food prep and mealtimes. When heating water for private homes was prohibitively expensive and inaccessible for most people even in wealthy cultures, public baths were designed to facilitate basic hygiene. In what is now Pakistan, the earliest known example of human-designed shared bathing was in the city of Mohenjo Daro. Here, the Indus people built ‘The Great Bath’, a large pool constructed of baked brick, complete with its own well and drainage system. 

In Ancient Greece, the comfort brought by newly-heated bathing led to the concept of a spa, and a new tradition of public bathing which would spread to both Egyptian and Roman cultures. In Rome, public baths quickly became the central focus of social life for both rich and poor, providing a much-loved third space that was just as important for gossip, connection and political debate as it was for cleanliness, visited even by the wealthy who had their own private baths at home. 

What began as a simple means of staying clean would ultimately become a social ritual mirrored across the globe, adapting to local cultures and evolving norms, but always playing the same important function: a space to share information and maintain social bonds. The tradition of the public bath is still seen today in Japanese onsen, Finnish saunas and Turkish hammam, among others. 

Why stone soup is an important recipe for hospitality 

What lessons lie here for hospitality operators? Firstly, the fact that scarcity so often leads to collaboration and creativity is clear proof of our natural capacity for community. This is especially important for hospitality.  

In a time when many of us feel more disconnected than ever, there is a rising hunger for the community that feels lost in much of modern life. More people are creating spaces inspired by those we’ve looked at here, from a smokehouse in the UK that’s open for free community use once a fortnight to an online platform reviving the use of traditional shared ovens around the world and building community around them, particularly in marginalised areas. Food is a natural connector — and that makes hospitality the perfect facilitator. This is an opportunity that should not be overlooked.

Restaurants, pubs, diners and cafés act as crucial third spaces where people come together to embark on new relationships, to reconnect, to celebrate and to grieve. This industry doesn’t just nourish people’s bodies: it nourishes communities and society as a whole. For hospitality businesses, it’s in both our line of duty and our own best interests to build businesses rooted in our communities, where the human propensity for connection is understood, valued and consciously encouraged. At The SRA, we speak to chefs and operators across the globe every day, and we see again and again that the businesses who take care of their teams, customers and communities are the ones who see this care returned in kind. 

Secondly, when resources seem scarce, can you find the 'villagers' who will help you make your own proverbial pot of stone soup? Shifting environmental, economic and legislative landscapes have combined to make hospitality a high-pressure and tenuous industry to be in — but community and collaboration form an important part of building long-term resilience, a strategy that is particularly apt for a sector that has people at its heart.  

In practice, this could take many forms: sharing a kitchen or premises among several businesses, pooling delivery resources, even teaming up with another local restaurant to host an event that brings people together, or to design new limited-edition menu items that boost the profiles of both brands. We're sometimes lucky enough to see this play out in real-time: following our industry event in Pujol in Mexico City in 2025, a group of attending businesses set up a new Whatsapp group among them specifically to support one another, share ideas and work together to find solutions to common challenges. We love to see it.  

If you’re looking for further inspiration, don’t miss our new global sustainability insights report, "Hospitality Rising: Global Challenges, Local Solutions”. Exploring the latest trends and influences shaping the sector, it’s packed with examples of smart sustainability initiatives from businesses of all shapes and sizes across the world, with Volume II: People showcasing how operators can put down strong community roots. Download your copy here!  

For more insights and stories from across our global network, follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn and sign up to our newsletter! Interested in how your own sustainability work measures up? Take our free Food For Thought quiz to find out.