The Basics of Running an Environmentally Friendly Restaurant

Green lifestyle is a peculiar phenomenon – it manages to stay relevant in spite of typical trend intervals and it seeps into various aspects of human culture and industry. It only goes to show that human consciousness can shift in spite of the unlikeliest of odds. As a matter of fact, more than 60% of restaurant visitors are now perfectly ready to pay significantly more for a service if they are informed that a restaurant adheres to green practices. If you want to attract those sorts of customers, here are the basics of running an environmentally friendly restaurant.

Make your restaurant look the part

What does an environmentally friendly restaurant look like? When it comes to energy efficiency and “organic” appeal, you can go with spacious, airy environments, crisp color schemes and LED lighting. Big windows that let a lot of natural light come in as well as unpretentious, stripped down look with air-cleaning potted plants strewn about is the best look. You also can’t forget about restaurant marketing. You’ll need to get your name out there for everyone to see so you can bring in lots of new customers.

Energy efficient appliances

Of course, if you want to own an energy efficient restaurant, you should definitely universally own energy efficient appliances. This means that you should carefully inspect every appliance as you go about browsing, and check if they have a Green Star stamp on them. From dishwashers that preserve both electricity and water, to energy efficient stoves and a pizza deck oven, it is practically impossible to find a sort of widely used kitchen appliance that doesn’t have a green counterpart on the market, so excuses won’t cut it anymore!

Buy local produce

The best way to preserve energy is to buy produce at a local market. The amount of fuel and energy that is required to get some more exotic produce to your location is simply too big. This also means that the range of produce you can work with will be significantly reduced and you will have to arrange the recipes and menu lists accordingly. With that in mind, we get to the next basic tip…

Rotate menu items

With each season comes the predominant set of fruits and vegetables. This means that you will have an abundance of ingredients for a particular range of meals depending on the time of the year. While this might appear to be a limitation, it is actually an incredible opportunity to add a popular and interesting feature to your restaurant’s business plan – you can rotate the menu items depending on the season and surprise guests with new and interesting meal arrangements. It also goes without saying that this is an amazing way to go green with your restaurant.

Recycle and compost

You can purchase or build two cisterns and place them in the back of your restaurant – possibly, you will have an access to the backyard or some open space where these cisterns can be placed. One of them can be used for recycling glass and the other can be used for composting. Most restaurants produce copious amounts of organic garbage each day – from fruit and vegetable scraps to egg shells and small bones – and this “garbage” can actually be put to good use. By disposing it into the composting cistern you can actually create an impressive amount of organic mulch which you can donate to a variety of farms as well as produce owners. This is an amazing way to reduce trash buildup and contribute to the “chain” of energy preserving practices through the variety of interconnected fields and industries.

Clean smart

By using your regular brands of strong cleaning chemicals, you are getting rid of the filth efficiently but you are also endangering the local ecosystem, as most of those chemicals are not biodegradable and they are also very toxic. This is important, because successful restaurants actually have to use a lot of these. While you might have to spend a bit more money on products that use biodegradable ingredients (there is actually more and more of them on the market), you can also create your own sort of cleaning solutions by following a few simple DIY rules and recipes.

When most people hear “green” and “organic” they tend to relate these notions to “expensive”. But, these types of practices are slowly but surely becoming an inseparable part of our global culture and they are becoming so ubiquitous that the matter of pricing has stopped to be an issue – as it becomes the norm, so does the price of the service become more reasonable. Therefore, going green with your restaurant is not only a smart move practically, but a good choice in terms of economics and marketing.