Beverage Programs Go Green

published in Sommelier Journal in June 2009

It is Alberto Gonzalez’s firm belief that a commitment to the ecological type of green can bring in the financial type of green.

In fact, he’s put his money where his mouth is—as have the customers who have flocked to his GustOrganics restaurant in New York City since its opening in early 2008. It’s the first certified-organic restaurant in New York state and the first in the country to use 100% USDA-certified-organic ingredients. In November, Gonzalez added a bar, also the first to be USDA-certified organic.

A former business consultant, Gonzalez moved to the United States from Buenos Aires in 2006 with zero restaurant experience. On business trips to New York, he discovered that it was difficult to find high-quality food at a price he could afford. “I realized that New Yorkers in general do not have the pleasure of enjoying organic foods in the city,” he recalls. “Also, it was disgusting to me to see the amount of garbage that restaurants generate and the tremendous impact the restaurant industry has on the environment, so I thought, ‘This is a good opportunity to thrive by starting up a really responsible business that thinks of the people first, the environment second, and lastly, profits.’”

His commitment is emphatic: all the drinks are free of chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and genetically modified organisms. In addition, GustOrganics uses no artificial ingredients or enhancers, most of its catering and delivery packaging is biodegradable within 90 days, its power is largely wind-generated, and 70% of its daytime light comes from the sun. Unfortunately, recycling programs and eco-friendly packaging tend to be much more costly than traditional disposal and disposables. “Most of the practices that make sense to people in terms of health and the environment cost much more money,” Gonzalez says. “We do not translate our higher costs to our prices, because our vision is to bring organics and sustainability into the mainstream. We are leveraging GustOrganics in some volume of sales that we hope to achieve very soon. It is very challenging from a financial side, but rewarding for the human side of the equation.”

That idealism, says Darren Tristano, executive vice president of the food-industry research-and-consulting firm Technomic, is necessary if restaurateurs hope to make green initiatives work in the current economic climate, when margins are already tight. “They can go green if it saves them green,” Tristano says. But Technomic research shows that while consumers now expect and prefer green initiatives, they will not pay more to support them; guests view such efforts as part of a restaurant’s cost of doing business.

Even in today’s economy, some operations are being nudged along by the green movement. The InterContinental Hotel in Chicago got a big push at the end of 2007, when a meeting planner from the West Coast issued a three-page list of environmental standards the hotel would have to meet to land that business. “The market, especially in Chicago, is very, very demanding about green initiatives,” says Tamas Vago, food and beverage director at the InterContinental. “And of course, California is always one step ahead of things, so it’s pretty much coming from there. Lots of meeting planners coming from the West Coast to the Midwest are putting down the rules, requiring us to produce something more green. That was great, because two years ago, if you would have asked me, ‘What does green mean for you?’ I could not really say.”

See the rest of this story online at Sommelier Journal or on my website at www.juliannewill.com.