4 Steps For Building An Effective Sustainability Plan For Your Restaurant

Making the decision to make your restaurant a more sustainable operation has gotten considerably easier in the last few years.  That’s because as consumer awareness grows there are more and more benefits associated with “green” restaurants.  If you’re in doubt, simply look at the National Restaurant Association’s sustainability efforts,...

Your Restaurant’s Guide To Compostable Food Service Supplies

Every to go container, every disposable cup, and every plastic fork your restaurant uses ends up in a landfill somewhere.  Over the course of a year that adds up to millions of tons of trash from all the restaurants in the United States.  For most restaurants, these disposable items are a necessary part of doing business, and the lower the cost, the better. Yet more and more restaurants are turning to compostable versions of...

Green Restaurants: How To Get LEED Certified And Why You Should

Every year, your restaurant’s green cred on the street gets more important.  According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), it’s one of the hottest trends of 2010.  Companies across the board, in and out of the food service industry, have scrambled in recent years to label their brands as green, with varying degrees of success. Some companies have taken advantage of the green mood consumers are in by “greenwashing”...

Green Initiatives: A Rise In Cost Or A Part Of Your Marketing Budget?

QSR magazine published an article recently about new take out packaging for restaurants made from recycled plastic water bottles.  Dubbed The Bottle Box, the restaurants that have used it say it performs just as well or better than normal plastic take out packaging, and that it can be customized with your establishment’s...

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...

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...

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 a six-kilowatt...