Green Restaurants: Turning Food Scraps Into Electricity

San Francisco restaurants are often on the cutting edge of sustainability and green practices.  They’ve pioneered ways to turn food waste into fertilizer, reduce food miles by sourcing locally, and decrease waste through recycling and composting. More recently, the East Bay Municipal Utility District has started converting...

10 Tips For Conserving Water In Your Restaurant

Restaurants use a lot of water.  Between cooking, washing dishes, cleaning up, and serving guests, your water bill takes a good chunk out of your monthly budget on a consistent basis.  Water conservation is also a big concern of a majority of your customers, especially if you operate in dry western states like California, Arizona, or Colorado. This post is going to add to a common theme here on The Back Burner: finding ways to...

How Hybrid Water Heating Can Make Your Restaurant As Cool As A Prius

Every restaurant needs hot water, and most of that water usually ends up being used to clean dirty cookware and cooking equipment.  More than likely you get your hot water from a conventional gas-fired water heater with a 100 gallon or larger tank.  For years the standard strategy for hot water has been to heat a large tank of water so that a large amount of hot water is on demand whenever you need it. As natural gas prices rise,...

17 Energy Efficiency And Going Green Tips

Improving your restaurant’s energy efficiency and sustainability practices has two rewards: reduced costs and great PR opportunities.  Studies have shown that consumers are increasingly aware of “green” issues and that they care about them, even in a down economy.  That means you can connect with your customers and build brand loyalty while streamlining your operation at the same time.  These articles will...

The Conflict Between Local Food And Local Government

As I have noted on The Back Burner before, more and more restaurants are sourcing their food locally.  And restaurants in urban areas are even turning vacant lots, empty roofs, and bare terraces into herb and vegetable...

This Isn’t American Idol: How Chipotle Went Platinum

A Chipotle restaurant in Gurnee Mills, IL recently gained Platinum level certification through the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, which is run by the United States Green Building Council.  The restaurant was built on the cutting edge of environmentally sustainable technology, boasting...

Stop Giving Waste Fryer Oil Away!

Disposing of used vegetable oil has always been a problem for restaurants.  In recent years it has gotten easier with the increasing demand for biodiesel.  Now many restaurants depend on free pickup services by biodiesel companies as a convenient and cheap way to dispose of their used fryer oil.  Some even pay to have the stuff hauled away. But...

7 Sustainability Tips For Your Restaurant

More and more restaurants are exploring ways to make their operations “sustainable.”  Yes, it’s a buzzword, and yes, it’s a trend most commonly associated with San Francisco restaurants and other yuppie hideouts.  That doesn’t mean most of the restaurants out there can’t utilize sustainability in their operations.  Trends show that consumers are increasingly educated about the benefits of...