Greening up our restaurants

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Permalink Reply by Chef John Hughes on April 5, 2008 at 11:39am

Chef;

Until a few month sago, I owned and operated a white tablecloth restaurant in Maine known as Windows on the Water for over 22 years.

During the last 7-8 years I began to move more and more of my ingredients towards all-natrual, organic, sustainable earth freindly selections. At first the move was difficult as it was hard to move prices in line with what I was paying for those premium ingredients...but slowly, my guests came to appreciate the extra effort and the health benefits and were more willing to pay a premium for it.

I think that it is going to get easier and easier as more and more information is shared and customer knowledge continues to increase.

Wal_mart has just started a whole "green" marketing campaign featuring organic - earth friendly roasted coffee. If WalMart is doing it, it won't be longbefore it's "mainstream".

Going 100% organic in my opinion is extremely tough...commiting to all-natural, organic, sustainable as much as possible is fairly easy once you set your mind to it. We even started a recycling program where our food waste is turned into protein rich potting soil.

Now, I am running an "In-Home Cooking Entertainment" business in which I feature these same ingredients and I can talk about and illustrate the benefits to small groups of foodies and thus far the response has been tremendious.

Regards,

Chef John

Permalink Reply by Daniel Clements on April 5, 2008 at 9:29pm

Thanks Chef,
I try to use not only organic but more local procucts my self. It is true I all comes down to commitment.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Clements on April 17, 2008 at 8:17pm

It seems for the first time in awhile the used oil companys are now going to pay to get the fryer oil.
I got the letter in the mail last week. They may have to fight the racoons for it though...