What is sustainability consulting?
Sustainability consultants give businesses, in our case restaurants, the advice, expertise, and necessary tools to manage their energy usage while remaining conscious of their environmental impact. The majority of restaurants miss out on many opportunities to cut cost through investments in energy renewal services.
Strategy and Services
Green Audit
Expert Guidance
Our comprehensive audit creates an easy to understand snapshot of current operations. Recommendations on quick fixes and long term strategy adjustments are then produced to find the best path toward increasing efficiency. We’re proud to help shape and improve how our clients structure and manage their business.
Strategic Planning
Achieve Your Goals
We examine what organizations are doing to stay relevant and competitive in this fast-paced world, and which ones are doing it best. We then strategize using smart tools and global resources in order to understand the implications of every choice our clients can make.
Advising
Grow Your Business
Staying up to date on sustainability is crucial for today's food industry leaders. Our continued guidance helps clients stay on the cutting edge and realize the latest cost advantages provided by a sustainable model. We design a strategy to lower financial and environmental costs, increasing the scope and capability of your business.
Five Areas of Focus
What we are doing is baking sustainability into every aspect of the business. All of these focus areas are interconnected and produce a profitable environmentally-friendly restaurant, a positive working environment, and a space for people to gather, share ideas, and feel good about what they are eating.
Purchasing
Purchasing food locally has a number of benefits. Buying locally lowers the cost of transportation built in to the purchase price. Less transportation also means less CO2 emissions. Buying locally adds variety to the menu through seasonality. Organics are cheaper and last longer on the shelf when purchased locally. Furniture and disposable products (pizza boxes, utensils, napkins) should come from recycled or rapidly renewable materials (bamboo). Some products, such as utensils, are not able to be recycled so it is especially important that they come from recycled or rapidly renewable sources.
Facilities
This area has a huge potential for cost savings. We recommend buying energy star rated appliances. LED light bulbs last several times longer than compact flourescent bulbs (CFLs) and use only 10% of the energy. Air conditioning on our end mean the use of a self regulating thermostat (NEST is the best) to control the environment in the restaurant. Maintenance keeps everything operating at peak performance to ensure cost savings are realized and avoids breakdowns. Reduce your carbon footprint by using bicycles and electric vehicles and encouraging your employees to do the same. Energy star dishwashers not only save electricity but significant amounts of water/rack. Kitchen and bathroom fixtures we have selected have a low flow rate to limit water usage while preserving functionality
Operations
We will implement the various techniques and strategies to make the restaurant as sustainable as possible. It is important to provide in depth employee training to give workers the knowledge to fully understand the importance of their actions and problem solve in the field.
Waste Management
We must work together to create a comprehensive waste plan with a guiding principle of reduction. Identifying all inputs and outputs is necessary for the business to live. All businesses must follow a regimented program that diverts the maximum amount of waste possible from the landfill.
Community Engagement
There is a growing network of sustainable restaurants in the US, they come together to share idea and best practices. A few organizations have created standards and there are many different certifications they offer. Our favorite is the GRA: they have the largest network and recently they did their first certification in Miami for a restaurant called Soul Tavern. Become part of this growing community of energy sustainable businesses!