Over the past year since my last blog post, I’ve quit my old job, tried to make a living off of my writing, failed. Worked as a Doordash Driver and home cook, and finally started a new job as a Front of House Manager at a casual/fine dining sushi restaurant. In this time, I’ve been able to get an up-close look at the food industry from multiple different perspectives. Because of this, I have gained some new ideas into how I think the food and restaurant industry can be improved. As with anything, I’m sure I also have some biases when it comes to this topic. I can also be somewhat of an idealist, thinking “if only we were able to do it this way, then everything would be perfect!” However, I know that things are never that easy or as black-and-white. I’m sure there are shortcomings to my ideas as well. But I do think they are a step in the right direction at the very least.
When thinking about what the best model for a restaurant would be, at first, I was stumped. I felt that, at every step there were things that didn’t make sense. From agriculture to food distribution, to food preparation and disposal and waste. There just seemed to be issues at every step of the way. In agriculture it’s unsustainable farming and livestock practices. Food distribution emits tons of carbon dioxide to get products across the world. The distribution itself is unfair in that there are poor communities that are in the middle of a food desert that can’t get access to healthy foods. Meanwhile in wealthier communities they just throw out all the excess food that they can’t sell. In food preparation, restaurants buy the same foods at any time of the year, regardless of the season. This means that the products have to come from far away, where that item is in season, which takes a huge toll on the environment. Restaurants will also cut a lot of corners in order to reduce the cost to them. From buying precut vegetables to getting products that have been heavily processed. On one hand I understand that the profit margins of restaurants are extremely tight and that anywhere you can save money you should. But the effects of this are literally ruining the environment. Food waste is a huge problem in this country, (you can read more about it in my blog post about Sustainability in the Food Industry). Looking at all these problems seems very overwhelming just because of the scale of each of the categories.
When looking at large complex issues like this, I feel like many people either give up or choose to focus on one aspect of the problem. I think it would be a lot more helpful, rather, to look at other large complex systems that work and try and model the food industry after those systems. I think the best system to model the food industry after would be an ecosystem. This brings me to what I am most excited about for the future of restaurants. I’m calling them closed system restaurants. These restaurants would have a focus on sustainability and community. A closed system restaurant would source all of their food from themselves or from hyperlocal suppliers. Having some sort of garden on site or close to the site would prevent long distance buying of food stuffs. It would also encourage seasonal eating which would also reduce these long supply chains. Partnerships between these types of restaurants and other local businesses would be vital in fostering a successful business but also in strengthening the communities that they reside in. For example, a restaurant partnering with a local bakery and selling their baked goods can only be good for both businesses. Ironically enough, loneliness is a huge issue in big cities. Fostering a sense of community so that people don’t feel so alone is another potential benefit that I can see these closed system restaurants having by putting the community first. Any extra food that a closed system restaurant might have could be sold via a marketplace or a farmer’s market in the neighborhood. It can also be sent to a food depository or donated to shelters. While this greatly reduces it, every restaurant is still going to have some food waste. A closed system restaurant would either compost the remaining food waste either themselves or through a composting service or use the food waste as scrap to help feed livestock. That compost could then be recycled back into the garden as fertilizer to grow more crops and start this whole cycle over again.
Not only is this beneficial for the environment and community, but it also relieves some of the financial burden from restaurants. It reduces their food costs immensely, money that can be funneled into paying employees a living wage and give people in the restaurant industry a better quality of life. Some issues with this that I can see would be that a restaurant would have to have more space to accommodate a garden which I understand can be hard to obtain. Because of this, start-up costs are more than likely going to be higher. You would also need to have a much broader scope of knowledge to start a restaurant like this. Now, just being a good chef isn’t enough, you also need to know how to farm and work together with the community to forge a strong bond. These types of restaurants are also, by nature of the idea, not in it for the money. Obviously, a business needs to make money to survive, but the goal of a closed system restaurant is not to make as much money as humanly possible, because that is inherently unsustainable.
This sort of idea is already being used by some restaurants at least partially. Blue Hill at Stone Barns is a restaurant in New York owned and operated by Chef Dan Barber that has a farm that they use to supply most of their food and the rest is sourced from local farms. If you haven’t already seen it, I would highly recommend the Chef’s Table episode that highlights Chef Dan Barber for a more detailed look at what he’s doing. I’m not sure how the restaurant handles food waste, so I won’t comment on that, but from a food sourcing and operating standpoint, this is a great example of what I imagine a closed system restaurant looks like.
Closed system restaurants are very exciting to me. Currently me and a few other people are working on opening a restaurant of our own. I want to incorporate as much of these ideas into my own restaurant as I possibly can with the goal of eventually becoming a fully self-sufficient restaurant that is focused on sustainability and community development. We need to rethink how we do restaurants and the entire food industry in general in order to fix these huge issues. This is one way that me any many other people are choosing to rethink how we do things but I’m sure there are many other ways to improve the food industry as well! If you have any ideas on how you think the industry can be fixed or improved let me know in the comments or DM me directly! I love to talk about these topics and would love to hear from you all.
The Cultural Chef 