How to make your restaurant more sustainable

Making your restaurant sustainable will contribute positively to both our earth’s future and your bottomline.

As customers become more environmentally conscious with 83% of people reporting that they wish restaurants would use more environmentally friendly practices, up to two-thirds of customers are now prepared to pay more for environmentally friendly products. 

We know the notion of sustainability can feel overwhelming, but in reality, you can make your restaurant notably more sustainable with a few small shifts.

The team at Otter partnered with sustainable living enthusiast, Addie Fischer, to learn some simple, tangible ways you can make your restaurant more sustainable.

Before we get started, let’s meet Addie Fischer: 

Addie Fisher is a sustainable living enthusiast and influencer. Drawing on her previous six years of eco-friendly lifestyle changes and blogging experience, Addie uses her blog, Old World New, as a way to advise the masses on how to make easy, sustainable lifestyle choices. When asked how restaurants can go about making simple, sustainable shifts, Addie focused on one key concept: composting. 

1. Research food waste with your team

Did you know that 60 - 80% of all restaurant garbage is food waste? The first step towards making your restaurant more sustainable through composting is simple: communicate! Educate your team about the what, how and why composting is important to both the Earth and your restaurant’s bottomline.

Don’t forget to include that 1. Leaders in the restaurant industry are increasingly focused on eliminating food waste 2. Composting is simple 3. Making this positive shift in regards to your food waste can result in increased customer satisfaction, local press attention and more. 

Check out the do’s and don’ts on composting by performance foodservice here to gain inspiration on how you can communicate this information to your team. 

2. Teach your employees how to compost

We know that it’s hard to find a spare minute amidst the hustle and bustle of the hospitality industry, but carve out thirty minutes to walk your employees through the “how-to” of composting your restaurant’s food scraps. Make sure to explain the composting process and expectations during employee training so incoming staff can learn the logistics. Place a poster in your kitchen reminding employees of what’s compostable and what isn’t to make the process even simpler for your team. 

3. Saving scraps in a container, but let your local composting experts handle the rest

We keep mentioning it (because it’s true) – you and your team are busy. The fact of the matter is that for most people, the best way to get started with composting is to let someone else do it for you. In today’s environmentally aware world, there’s no reason you or your team should have to do the physical labor of turning your scraps into soil. On top of that, we’re going to assume you don’t have a garden to use that soil in (if you do, that’s really freaking cool). If you’re like the vast majority, composting can and should be as simple as saving your scraps and giving them away to someone who can use them. This lets your restaurant (and our world) gain all the benefits of composting, without requiring your team to spend their precious time doing the physical labor.

The net-net on making your restaurant more sustainable

If you made it this far, we’re proud of you for taking the first step for the environment and your business. Once you start composting and caring for your local food system, feel free to let your customers know! Share your restaurant’s decision to start composting to garner some good attention for your business and incentivize diners to choose your restaurant over a competitor.