Why Don’t We Talk About Sustainability in Restaurants?

The conventional idea of hospitality is at odds with openly discussing sustainability.

When is the last time you had a real conversation about sustainability with your server or bartender in a restaurant?

Does anyone regularly ask about the farming methods used to grow a menu ingredient? Are you choosing which restaurant to celebrate your birthday at based on how sustainable it is? And has anyone ever left a one-star review on Yelp for a restaurant with poor sustainability practices?

For me, the answer is to all those questions is “never.” After 18 years of living and eating out (a lot) in NYC, I probably had hundreds of conversations with restaurant staff about flavor profiles, unique ingredients, the wine list, new dishes, preparation methods, or even the damn weather, but virtually none about sustainability.

I started working in the food industry as a chef but a big part of my career has been on the CPG side, working with big food brands to innovate better for people and planet. In this corner of the food system, sustainability gets a ton of lip service and action. Brands big and small have worked tirelessly over the past few decades to invest in sustainability and communicate it to their consumers. The average CPG food consumer today probably spends more time examining food labels for nutrition and sustainability information than ever before.

So why does that same sustainability-minded consumer seemingly leave those planetary concerns at the door when dining out?

Look, I’m not saying these conversations never happen. There are probably some people who ask the tough questions. There are certainly some restaurants who have done a lot to be more sustainable and they are doing important work. But the idea that sustainability should be a central part of restaurant hospitality is currently the exception, not the rule.

Even at restaurants like Blue Hill at Stone Barns or Chez Panisse, two of the biggest poster children for the sustainable food movement, the topic of sustainability never directly came up for me over multiple times eating at each. Maybe they were having an off night? The service at both restaurants was wonderful, with mentions of sources and preparation methods for key ingredients that came from nearby or on-site and were handled with care, but that was about it. Of course I’m well aware of the considerable work those name brands have accomplished in food sustainability, but their default mode of service focuses more on the comfort of the guests rather than talking up their their sustainability practices. Which I don’t disagree with.

So if the sustainability conversation doesn’t always happen at places like Blue Hill or Chez Panisse for someone like me who works in food and thinks about sustainability a lot, it must never happen for guests of more mainstream-progressive places like Chipotle or mass-market brands like Taco Bell. I know big restaurant chains like Chipotle and others have invested significantly in making their operations more sustainable, but that work is completely divorced from the customer’s experience of eating in those restaurants. And maybe that’s ok. I mean, can you imagine if an employee at Chipotle asked whether you wanted high carbon footprint carne asada or nitrogen fixing pinto beans in your burrito?

Please Enjoy Responsibly

Is it at odds with traditional hospitality to talk about the planet in a restaurant, where the goal is to make the customer feel like they’re the center of the world? After all, sustainability is focused on making things better for everyone in the world, not just the people sitting at table 12. Great restaurant hospitality can serve as a form of escapism for diners, who will pay handsomely for that experience. So is it a breach of that social contract to remind diners how we are probably not going to stay under the Paris Agreement’s 2°C global warming threshold?

By no means am I advocating for servers in restaurants to start lecturing guests on the climate implications of their menu choices. Just because your box of hipster granola has a 300 word soliloquy on the back of the package about the importance of healthy soil, doesn’t mean these missives should be forced upon restaurant guests right after hearing about the nightly specials. But the fact that one part of the food industry (CPG) spends so much time boasting about how sustainable they are while another huge part of the industry (Restaurants) spends so little time talking to their customers about it is interesting.

One of my core beliefs about food is that it’s a deeply logical and emotional topic. I’ve written about how this duality appears in food many times, like here, here, here, here, and here. And the fact that we’ve all pretty much agreed that restaurants aren’t the time or place for meaningful sustainability conversations between restaurant and guest is a reminder that humans want places to abandon reality and connect with food, family, and friends on a purely emotional and hedonistic level.

The science of being sustainable is highly logical, yet the reason why we love restaurants is largely emotional. But just because the average diner isn’t in the right headspace to talk about carbon credits at dinner, doesn’t mean that restaurants should just abandon trying to be more sustainable. And when it comes to trying to communicate some message about sustainability to customers, maybe letting the food carry the message is a more congruous and memorable move.

Take Silo in London, who claims to be the world’s zero-waste restaurant. Virtually nothing that comes into the restaurant gets thrown away. Save for “the 0.1% of [their] output that can’t be fermented, upcycled, composted or recycled” which they refer to as “alien waste.” The team at Silo is so diligent and creative about minimizing waste that in an 18-month span, the total amount of alien waste they accumulated could be condensed into a 4 x 4 inch cube.

At Silo, the sustainability narrative is told through the dishes on their menu where they use their “no-waste” constraint as a creative catalyst, not a handicap. While other restaurants view reducing food waste as a cost-saving or corporate social responsibility measure, Silo built their entire concept around eliminating waste. Their dishes showcase myriad underutilized and sometimes discarded ingredients with a big focus on using fermentation for preservation and flavor development. This dedication to the cause sends a profound message to the world that one can derive pleasure from acting sustainably. And while most restaurants won’t have the fortitude to go fully no-waste like Silo, I hope they can be inspired by them to show how sustainability doesn’t always have to mean sacrifice.

The Limits of Sacrifice

In hospitality, many of the typical gestures of sustainability can feel like small sacrifices for the guest to endure. Paper straws, serving tap water only upon request, and optional hotel room housekeeping are common ways companies show their dedication to the planet. Sure, every bit matters, but do these token acts of planetary kindness really make a dent in the overall problem or do they just make us feel better about ourselves?

At best, these kinds of actions add up to some meaningful amount of resources saved. But at worst, they give everyone a false sense of security, making people feel like they did their part for the planet and no further action is needed. According to National Geographic, of the 8 million tons of plastics that end up in the ocean each year, a paltry 0.025% of that is plastic straws. So if companies like Starbucks really cared about ridding the world of single use plastic, they would have eliminated plastic cups and lids entirely, not just the straws.

Where do we draw the line of sacrifice where we’ve cut our consumption levels enough to preserve resources and keep the planet clean, but we can still live a recognizable modern life? This is the question that will define our society in the coming decades.

For better or worse, our current civilization is built around consumption. We go to work every day to create products and services for others to consume so we can earn money to fuel our own consumption. The restaurant industry, as we know it, has been designed to facilitate consumption. And unless we’re prepared to revert to an ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the best we can do is to replenish what we consume and heal any damage we inflict on the planet as we do so.

To Renew and Restore

The word "restaurant" comes from the French verb restaurer, which means "to restore oneself" or "to renew." The first known eating establishments resembling restaurants appeared in 1100 A.D. in China, well before the world was in a state where its citizens needed to worry about the environment. Which means that for the vast majority of time the restaurant hospitality profession has existed prior to the industrial revolution, restauranteurs legitimately didn’t have to think about pleasing anyone else but the customer.

But today’s world is very different. How might we expand the original definition of a restaurant so it can renew and restore the planet too? And can that updated definition revolve around delivering pleasure while supporting a purpose? Can we get more foodservice operators to think like Silo and find the beauty and flavor in being sustainable, instead of simply taking away everyone’s straws and calling it a day? Does sustainable hospitality always have to be about sacrifice?

While it might be cringe-inducing for your server to launch into a TED talk about climate change as they take your drink order, there is a big opportunity to define what sustainability tastes like on the plate. Tapping into a more biodiverse set of foods or creating new recipes made from previously discarded ingredients are two starting points for restauranteurs to show guests how something can be sustainable and delicious. These are small first steps that can show eaters how sustainability can add to their dining experience, not take away from it. But the industry shouldn’t stop there and needs to keep innovating toward more creative and impactful solutions.

Humans were ingenious enough to invent the restaurant and everything that happens inside of them. From stocks to sauté to sushi to sous vide, the innovative spirit of the industry knew no bounds when challenged to nourish and delight other humans. All of what we call the restaurant industry was simply made up by people no smarter than you or I. And if mere mortals invented the idea of a restaurant, we can reinvent it too.

There is no handbook yet for what sustainable hospitality looks like. But just as Auguste Escoffier codified and modernized the framework for French cuisine in the 1890s, with his invention of the kitchen brigade system and the recipes for the fundamental mother sauces, today’s restaurant workers have a chance to redefine the framework for hospitality to simultaneously renew and restore people and planet.

What does sustainability taste like? I don’t know if we know yet. But if we don’t come to the table together to write that recipe, then we may never know.

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Mike Lee is a food futurist, foresight consultant, and author of the book, Mise: On the Future of Food.