Green Grub

Just found this article from back in May that ran in USA TODAY:

Can restaurants go green, earn green?

ARLINGTON, Va. — Ted Turner struts into one of his busiest restaurants at lunch hour and is ogled by startled customers. One overeager diner leaps in front of Turner for a handshake, then gushes, “Love your food, Ted. What’s next?”

The short answer: green grub.

Turner, the media mogul turned philanthropist, now wants to be known as something of a different color: a green restaurant owner. In other words, a guy whose restaurants leave a smaller carbon footprint on the environment.

Which is why you won’t find a plastic straw or cup in any of Ted’s Montana Grills’ 55 casual dining restaurants. The straws are made from biodegradable paper. The menus are printed on 100% recycled paper. Even the cups are cornstarch.

More Here: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/environment/2008-05-15-green-restaurants-eco-friendly_N.htm

So You Want to Start a Restaurant

by Ethan on November 12, 2008

Chef Thierry Rautureau, the so-called “Chef in the Hat”, is an institution in Seattle. He hosts a radio program, is on a first name basis with top chefs around the country, and for twenty one years has run one of the city’s finest restaurants, Rover’s. He’s a local celebrity chef.

Last night we had dinner with Thierry and his wife Kathy at Cascina Spinasse, a new Italian place on Capitol Hill. We chose it because it was high on all our wishlists, and because it’s fun to eat Italian with a Frenchman. Also, it turns out Martha Stewart raved about it just last week, so this may be our last chance to get a table. The food didn’t disappoint (particularly a delicate ravioli with Castelmagno cheese), and the decor was delightfully rustic, but we were there for the company.

At Urbanspoon we’ve gotten to see just how difficult the restaurant business can be. In Seattle alone we’ve seen a dozen restaurants open and then close up shop this past year. We were eager to chat with someone who had “made it” and see if he had any tips to pass along.

Lesson One: Shmooze

Thierry walked in the restaurant door, eponymous hat on his head, and immediately people began to greet him. Servers, fellow patrons, the owner, everyone. Half the people in the restaurant knew him from the first moment, and by the end he’d introduced himself to the other half. Many knew him from his restaurant, others knew him by reputation, and still others just wanted to meet Mr. Popular.

Needless to say, no one seemed to recognize us Urbanspoon guys. We should have worn hats.

So that’s the first lesson I’d take away if you want to be a successful in the business: be sociable, don’t be shy.

Lesson Two: It’s a Business

When it came time to order, we carefully considered the menu and then Thierry gleefully announced, “Of course we have to try all of it”. Fourteen dishes later he was still eager to try more. He regaled us with stories of his eating prowess. And he didn’t limit himself to haute cuisine — he was as effusive talking about his favorite phở joint as he was about Le Bernardin.

So clearly Chef Thierry loves food. But his mind is always on the business. There was a gleam in his eye as he talked about the bottom line. He chatted happily about Excel spreadsheets and web infrastructure. We spent hours (it was a long meal) talking about blogging, data mining, and other technical trivia and he took that as hungrily as the anchovies.

On the subject of phở, Chef Thierry predicted it’s the fast food of the future. Healthy, tasty, quick, with cheap ingredients. In today’s economic climate, those are considerations every would-be restaurant owner should take into account.

Food is important, but money keeps the ovens on.

Lesson Three: Don’t Start a Restaurant

We got to talking about his advice for people starting a restaurant. In short, he says: don’t.

But if you really want to start restaurant… still, don’t.

According to Thierry, only if your compulsion is so great, so irresistible, so frankly neurotic that nothing else will satisfy. Only then should you actually start a restaurant. This way, you will either prevail or the physical and economic punishment of the restaurant business will eventually “eliminate the bug”.

Lesson Four: Find a Sugar Daddy

There was one circumstance under which he felt starting a restaurant made sense: if the money doesn’t matter. If the latest stock market crash didn’t rattle your plans to spend a month at your place in the Hamptons and you love the romance of having your own restaurant, you just might make a perfect owner.

Photo courtesy of Lara of Plates and Packs.

http://www.urbanspoon.com/blog/37/So-You-Want-to-Start-a-Restaurant.html

Zone 7

Running a restaurant focusing on local, seasonal ingredients is by far one of the most gratifying things I’ve had the opportunity to attempt.  However, sourcing a steady supply of local produce can be challenging even to the best foragers, especially in winter.  That’s where Mikey Azzara and Zone 7 come in.  Not only do they have relationships with a handful of local NJ and PA farmers, they aggregate their produce and deliver it once a week right to our doorstep.  We love us some Mikey.

There’s also a Winter Farmer’s Market in Princeton that he’s helped to organize.

For a List of Vendors Click Here

Keeper Springs

As discussed in earlier postings we’ve been struggling with selling bottled water.  I think we may have finally figured out a workable solution to meet the demand for the product while not sacrificing our principles.

Keeper Springs

From KeeperSprings.com

“Keeper Springs is fresh mountain spring water bottled right here in the United States from a sustainable spring.

While our company encourages investment in public water supplies and minimizing the use of plastic bottles – and of course, maximizing recycling – we believe that bottled water is a permanent fact of our society and that ours is among the best. Our unique business proposition is, along with proudly selling great spring water, we will donate all of our profits toward providing our children with a clean and safe world to inherit.”

Dimmers = No Possibility of Energy Efficient Bulbs?

Recently ordered ligthing from these folks:

Very happy with what we got – and luckily it was cost effective as well as environmentally responsible.   HOWEVER, super bummed to learn there’s no way to use energy efficient light bulbs for a track head on a dimmer switch…  Hard to believe it’s true.  Doing some research but if anyone has already done so – please let me know.

Fair Trade?

Met with a local coffee roaster – no beans grown locally in NJ. Supporting a small, locally owned business using fair trade coffee is the best we can do. Had the opportunity to tour the facility and check out the operation, definitely an education. He also mentioned there’s more Blue Mountain coffee sold in New York City alone than grown in all of Jamaica – you figure it out.  Also learned there’s more to the Fair Trade story than one might think.

Check out the principle’s of fair trade here.  Hard to imagine something so altruistic could be bad.

There’s some question as to who really benefits from the Fair Trade movement. Our roaster swears there’s better programs providing help to coffee farmers.

Trying to learn more. Came across this in an article on BBC.com

“…not everyone is convinced that fair trade is a good idea.

Some critics claim that by focusing on achieving a fair price for poor farmers, the movement doesn’t address issues of mechanisation and industrialisation – radical changes that might allow farmers in the developing world to stop doing back-breaking work and break out of the poverty cycle.

So how fair is fair trade? Is it about getting Third World farmers to accept their lot, or, at best, a little bit more than their lot?

Eileen Maybin, a spokeswoman for the Fairtrade Foundation, says it does help to improve farmers’ lives.

“Fairtrade focuses on ensuring that farmers in developing countries receive an agreed and stable price for the crops they grow, as well as an additional Fairtrade premium to invest in social projects or business development programmes.

“Typically, farmers’ groups decide to use the premium on education, healthcare and clean water supplies, or the repair of roads and bridges, and to strengthen their businesses, improve the quality of their crop or convert to organic production.”

Ms Maybin says that those farmers involved in fair trading are happy with the results.

“The farmers and workers involved in Fairtrade always talk about how much they, their families and their communities benefit.”

Yet others argue that fair trade can end up being a trap for farmers, tying them into a relationship of dependence with charity-minded shoppers in the West.

Madsen Pirie, of the right-leaning think-tank the Adam Smith Institute, says that in protecting the market for certain producers, the movement effectively makes farmers “prisoners to our market”.

“They become dependent on us continuing to pay premium prices for their goods.”

Many tens of thousands of people escaped poverty last year, most of them in India and China, but he says that was done through real market developments rather than small-scale fair trade deals. They were lifted out of poverty because they could sell their products on the open global market, rather than being sectioned off in the fair trade market.”

Here’s the link to the article

BBC’s How Fair is Fair Trade?

And others I’ve found on the subject:

Economic Approach to Evaluating Fair Trade

Fair-Trade Coffee Article on Accountability Central

Does the Fairness of Fair Trade Matter?

Organic Consumers Association’s Take

Reclaimed Wood

We’re sourcing reclaimed barn wood to use as the face of our counter, cabinetry and shelving in the restaurant.  Sounds cool, right?  How hard can it be to find old wood?  We can’t hit the broad side of an old barn.  Trying to find 250 board feet and having a tough time.  If anyone has any suggestions let us know.  I’ve found several people offering what we’re looking for, every time I call or email, turns out they don’t have it OR it’s super crazy expensive.   And you know how we feel about super crazy expensive.

Selling Bottled Water

Internal dilemma – do we sell bottled water or not. I say no, others disagree citing lost sales opportunities.

Developing a case to plead & came across an article on Mother Earth News citing the following:

- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for tap water are slightly more stringent than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s standards for bottled water

- Approximately 1.5 million gallons of oil — enough to run 100,000 cars for a whole year — are used to make plastic water bottles.

- growth in bottled water production has increased water extraction in areas near bottling plants, in some cases leading to water shortages that affect nearby consumers and farmers

- In addition to the millions of gallons of water used in the plastic-making process, 2 gallons of water are wasted in the same purification processes for every gallon that goes into the bottles

- federal share of funding for water systems has declined from 78 percent in 1973 to 3 percent today

anyone else ever see Penn & Teller’s show where they set up the “Water Bar” in LA?

If we do sell bottled water, it should definitely have a tarantula in the bottle so we can tell people it can from the amazon.

Green Market-ing

interesting article about Green Marketing from Dan Dunlop on his blog Brand Expeditions.

“One lesson that green organizations and their marketers need to learn is that if you stake out a ‘green’ position, you need to be green. It’s another example of living the brand. I know it sounds simple, but it’s not. These companies need to be aware of green marketing and advertising practices such as green direct mail (yes, it really exists, although the notion is troubling) and more sustainable printing practices. The US Postal Service is now promoting its green direct mail program. Check out this recent NY Times article on green direct mail…”

check out the rest of the article here

pos(sibly) the worst

so we were meeting with some potential pos (point of sale) providers yesterday – aloha & pixel point.

pixel point seemed very nice, you can use their machines on any windows-based machine and their code is open source…according to the sales rep, anyway.  still making sure all claims are true.

then we met with the ring-a-ding kid (age fifty was a distant memory) from aloha. asked him if we can use our own online delivery module, he told me it was another division he could put me in touch with.  going to run $5-10K. when I clarified we had our own web designer who is coding the delivery site he snidely told me it was impossible. when i mentioned p. point seemed to think it was no problem to hook into their system he said, “you wanna hyundai or a corvette? cause i got a corvette.” pretty freakin’ awesome.  whatta douche.

still checking out positouch and another system i’ve never heard of before.

either way, aloha to aloha.  i can’t deal with that guy.  corvette he says…