Wednesday, October 23, 2002 Restaurateurs find doing right thing feeds bottom line/'Sustainability' has green and social benefits (SF Chronicle) Janet Fletcher, Chronicle Staff Writer When Jesse Cool opened Late for the Train restaurant in Menlo Park in 1975, her commitment to organic produce put her on the lunatic fringe. Almost 30 years later, organic fruits and vegetables are a supermarket staple, and such food behemoths as Dole have a stake in the niche. For Cool and a handful of other Bay Area restaurateurs, it's time to expand the cause. Their new mantra is "sustainability," a broadly defined philosophy that encompasses both environmentalism and social concerns. Sustainability is a broader way of "going green" -- using locally grown and organic ingredients, antibiotic-free meats and fish species that aren't endangered. It means recycling cans and bottles, of course, but also turning food scraps into compost and using renewable energy sources and environmentally friendly cleaning products. It also means following fair labor practices and educating patrons about Earth-friendly dining. Many changes these restaurants are making are not visible to diners, but their actions hint at a new trend of the chef as guardian of humanity's resources. "I'm not deluding myself that we're going to change the world," said Amaryll Schwertner, chef-owner of Stars in San Francisco, "but what can we do to make a tiny bit of difference?" At Stars, as at several hundred other San Francisco restaurants, segregating food scraps for compost is a new kitchen routine making a huge difference. With the aid and encouragement of the local garbage companies -- Sunset Scavenger and Golden Gate Disposal & Recyling -- restaurants throughout the city are putting carrot scrapings, fish trimmings and even beef bones in green bins provided by the waste companies. Every day, the two companies collect about 300 tons of such material and truck it to a new compost facility near Vacaville. Eat Well Farms in Winters (Yolo County), a regular at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market and a supplier to several top Bay Area restaurants, is one of several agricultural operations using the city compost. "All this used to go to the landfill," said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Norcal Waste systems, the parent company of Sunset Scavenger and Golden Gate Disposal. "Now it's primarily going to agriculture. We've closed the recycling loop locally, and that's highly unusual." OAKLAND GETS IN ACT At the request of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, Norcal Waste has recently debuted the service in Oakland; about 60 restaurants participate. At Postino in Lafayette, where there is no city composting, executive chef Cat Cora established a relationship with the nearby Moraga Gardens. The gardeners bring her organic lettuces and vegetables on Fridays and take away a week's worth of kitchen scraps to compost. "By this time next year," said Cora, "we'll be getting products that we've had a part in (growing)." Some chefs are taking aim at nonrecyclable materials such as plastic wrap and takeout containers. At Ti-Couz, a San Francisco creperie, owner Sylvie Le Mer declines to offer takeout, in part because she doesn't want to be the source of more garbage. Her waiters are trained to encourage people to order one dish at a time and to discourage over-ordering and the resulting doggie bags. "Some people get furious because we are hindering their freedom," Le Mer said. "But 90 percent of those packages are left behind." Schwertner has stopped using plastic garbage liners but says the decision has had its own complications. "We cut back on our plastic use," she points out, "but now we have to wash the garbage cans out. So I'm wasting all this water, and I have to put detergent in it." Nontoxic, biodegradable cleaning products are among the sustainably oriented chefs' holy grails. Removing the grease from kitchen walls, the grunge on pots and the milky water spots on wine glasses can require a whole army of chemicals. Restaurant bathrooms must be scoured daily, dishes sterilized, floors scrubbed. Chefs worry about the long-term health effects of the products their cleaning crews use and the impact on the ozone layer and the water supply. "Some of the degreasers that restaurants use, you would not want to spill on your skin," said Kerry Heffernan of Oakland's Autumn Moon restaurant. "But bleach is the most dangerous chemical in the restaurant. Unskilled laborers may not know that it needs to be diluted or that more isn't better." BENEFICIAL BACK-BREAKERS Finding safe products hasn't been easy, but getting janitors to use them has been even harder. At Stars, Autumn Moon and San Francisco's Jardiniere, organic citrus-based solvents have replaced many of the more problematic compounds. But they require more elbow grease, which hasn't endeared them to the users. "Our janitor is resistant," admitted Gaby Skurnick, kitchen manager at Jardiniere. "He thinks that the stronger and smellier, the better." In some Northern California restaurants, sustainable principles are transforming employee benefits. Better-compensated employees stay longer, care more and do better work, the thinking goes. And in an industry renowned for its turnover, investing in employees is paying off, restaurateurs say. Jardiniere, Stars, Hayes Street Grill and the Meetinghouse are among San Francisco establishments that start their least skilled workers at or above the "living wage" of $9.50 an hour. Jardiniere general manager Larry Bain says the investment has quickly paid for itself in lower costs for labor and food. Labor costs went down because employees started showing up for work consistently. In the past, late or no- show employees had forced others to stay late or work an extra day, driving up overtime. At first, Bain was puzzled by the dollar savings for ingredients, but then, he said, "We realized that our prep cooks had tremendous control over our food costs. When you're faced with a box of artichokes or fish or meat to trim, the difference between a good job and a half-assed job can be 20 percent." BRIDGING COMMUNICATION GAP Stars' many Spanish-speaking employees can avail themselves of free English courses twice a week, taught in the restaurant by a restaurant employee. At Jardiniere, in-house English classes have been so beneficial to both parties -- employee and employer -- that the restaurant is opening them to employees of other restaurants and offering scholarships. "Our goal was to teach people how to navigate in the outside world," Bain said. "If you can't speak English, everything is more complicated and takes longer. People would be late for work because they couldn't talk to their landlord or deal with the bank." The voluntary classes cost $200 for 12 lessons, with the tuition deducted from the employee's paycheck over the course of 12 weeks. Initially, the restaurant intended to pay for the classes, but others persuaded Bain that workers would take the lessons more seriously if they invested in them. So Bain devised an incentive plan with employees getting half their money back on graduation. If they pass an English test three months later, they get the rest of the tuition back. The classes have also had impact that defies measurement. "What we saw more than language progress was self-confidence progress," Bain pointed out. "The kitchen used to be a quiet, sad place in the morning, a sullen environment. The prep cooks would be in there with their heads down. Now I walk into the kitchen, and everybody looks up and says, 'Hey, what's happening?' They're constantly trying out their new phrases." In a subtle way, the focus on sustainability has also shifted chefs' purchasing priorities. Many say they are now more committed to buying local products than they are to buying organic because of the environmental cost of long-distance shipping. Besides, they figure, they can eventually persuade a farmer to farm organically, but first they have to keep the farm in business. Recently, the Bon Appetit Management Co. in Palo Alto -- which oversees food service at Oracle, Cisco Systems, Stanford University and other major businesses and institutions -- launched an initiative to encourage its chefs to buy locally, even direct from the farm. At SGI (formerly Silicon Graphics) in Mountain View, a Bon Appetit account, chef Bob Hart now uses a distributor that specializes in delivering local, mostly organic produce within 24 hours of harvest. TOUGH DECISIONS But for individual restaurateurs, the choices aren't always apparent, or even possible. Cool says she wanted patrons at her takeout-oriented JZ Cool Eatery in Menlo Park to be able to bring in their own containers, but the health department wouldn't allow it. At Hayes Street Grill in San Francisco, partner Patricia Unterman is fuming over the recent ban on all coastal bottom fishing in California, a move designed to aid the endangered rock fish. Unterman argues that the regulation, which also affects sand dabs and petrale, goes too far and creates a sustainability dilemma for the chef. "There are fishermen who fish for sand dabs and petrale who have absolutely no bycatch," Unterman said, "and the sand dab population is huge. Yes, we can move on to other fish, but here's the irony. We're getting beautiful halibut, but it's flown down from Alaska instead of coming from 3 miles off the coast." Other Bay Area chefs say they simply can't afford to make more sustainable choices, especially in a difficult economy. "I'd like to do organic but it's too pricey," said Bill Stone of San Francisco's Atlas Cafe. "It would put me in a price range my customers aren't willing to pay." MAKING LEFTOVERS INTO TOMORROW'S FOOD The compost produced from San Francisco restaurant food waste is available to landscapers and home gardeners through American Soil Products in Richmond. "It has double the amount of nitrogen that you find in compost from curbside collection programs," says Paul Elias, a compost buyer for the company. ASP employees have subjected the compost to growing trials and found that plants perform well in soil amended with it. The Organic Material Review Institute, a national organization based in Portland, Ore., has determined that the compost is appropriate for use on organic farms and gardens. Elias recommends top-dressing with an inch or two of the compost this fall to allow winter rains to leach the nutrients into the ground. The compost is available for purchase at American Soil Products, 2121 San Joaquin St. (off Central Avenue), Richmond; (510) 292-3000. Also, 565 Jacoby St. (at Marin Recycling Center), San Rafael; (415) 456-1381. Call for price. E-mail Janet Fletcher at food@sfchronicle.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle