Sustainability in the Restaurant Industry with Michael Oshman and Michael Dorf
Alexander McCobin:
And kick off this Liberty Ventures webinar. Thank you everyone who's joining us either live or watching the recording right now. My name is Alexander Mccobin. I'm the founder and CEO of Liberty Ventures, which is the largest network of purpose driven business leaders who are not only committed to advancing a free and prosperous future. But committed to working with each other in order to scale great businesses that are making a positive impact in the world. And so making a greater impact through their individual efforts and their collective efforts. And we do everything from facilitate one-on-one connections, such as with these webinars or in person events like our New York principal business summit coming up to to facilitating investments in early stage startups providing advisors for companies to grow and its talent network to recruit from. But one of the things that we think is really important. Is helping and facilitating the knowledge sharing between members of our community on really important topics and that's why I'm absolutely thrilled to be introducing the two Michaels for us today, Michael Osman and. Dwarf who are both individually passionate about and have incredible insights together for promoting sustainability in the restaurant industry and to provide context for everyone. Michael Oshman is the founder of the green restaurant movement that he's going to be sharing a lot more about, and Michael Dorf is the founder, chairman and CEO of City Winery, one of the most amazing. Restaurant changes in the country that I personally have been a longtime customer of and know is doing incredible work in promoting sustainability through his resume. Gentlemen, thank you so much both for the work that you're doing and for taking the time to share your insights with the Liberty Ventures community today and hopefully get more people to think about changes they can make in their businesses or with other businesses that they work with in the restaurant industry.
Michael Oshman:
Our pleasure. Thank you for having us.
Michael Dorf:
Yeah. Pleasure to be here again with you.
Alexander McCobin:
So why don't we start with you, Michael Oshman love for you to be able to share a little bit more about what the green restaurant movement is and what you do to help restaurants promote sustainability.
Michael Oshman:
Wonderful. Just need to have a presentation queued up. I just need to be able to share the screen and.
Alexander McCobin:
Go ahead and try now.
Michael Oshman:
OK. Let's do it. You guys see it?
Alexander McCobin:
Now we can, right?
Michael Oshman:
All. OK. So. What comes to your mind when you think about solving the climate crisis? Can you see the next image just to make sure it's working?
Michael Dorf:
An electric car.
Michael Oshman:
There you go. Exactly. You might think it might be driving an electric car. You might think eating organic food. Or going vegan. Or even going solar. And those are all great things and great assumptions. But would you believe that greening the rest of industry should actually be? At the top. Of your green list. Why is green in the western industry so important? You're going to hear some statistics and walk away having either the restaurant industry at the top of your list or close to it. As two top priorities that the world and individuals should take in order to fix our world, and we'll talk. A little bit about what we do. So why is it so important? The rest of industry uses 1/3 of all electricity in the retail sector. Americans are spending more than half of their. Food budget. Dining out. There's the Pacific garbage patch we've all heard about. In the Pacific Ocean. Plastics in the ocean. 2/3 of the world's seafood is overfished. And fisheries are expected to collapse by 2050 if we do not start to consume sustainable seafood. By 2015, oceans are expected to contain more plastics than fish. Not only is this an environmental issue, but you know, Michael, your restaurant owner, some other people in the audience might be if you serve fish you need, you need a sustainable source of fish. So it's a very the environmental movement is a very self-serving movement. In a in a good way, we just need to care about ourselves in 10 or 20 years. Nine out of the top ten items collected during coastal cleanup days are found in from restaurants. Only 8% of plastics are being recycled. Recycling is great. Please don't stop recycling, but it is not the solution. We need to stop using disposables. We need to increase reusables. It is the end of the solutions. Reduce, reuse, recycle. It's not just a cliche, it's the last thing we should be doing. So please continue doing it. But we've got to shift over to Reusables. The environmental impacts of the of meat consumption raising animals for food actually uses 45% of the Earth's total land and 55% of the water. One to two acres of rainforest are cleared every second, generally for raising cattle in the US, 60% of the corn goes to feedstock and 18% of the world's carbon emissions are associated with meat consumption. And what's the impact of food waste? Almost 3% of all US greenhouse gas emissions annually just from food waste, 21% of the US agricultural water usage just thrown away food waste 21% of US landfill content, food waste and 20% of all US front lands is growing food. That is feeding nobody. It's $218 billion in loss. If it were a country, the worldwide food system would be the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. And if the American? Western industry was its own country. It would be the 17th largest country on the. Planet. That's from an economic perspective, meaning at all of these UN conferences, the American restaurant industry should theoretically have a table that has a larger environmental impact than roughly 180 countries. The average restaurant produces 100,000 lbs of trash each year. And the average restaurant uses almost or actually over 2,000,000 gallons of water each year. What does it mean to green the restaurant industries? That's the problem. That's the why. It's a major environmental data that points to if we want to solve this problem, we need to look at the restaurant industry and the American. Rest industry specifically. So what does? What do we do? We help to green the restaurant industry. We focus on the US and Canada and there's five steps we do an environmental assessment to give restaurants a baseline. Where are they today? What's good, what's not good? Where is the room for improvement? And then we work with the restaurants and their vendors to implement environmental changes, implement recycling programs, reduce. Cleaning chemicals, food, solar, etcetera. And once those steps are done, we verify them in a transparent way so that the consumers aren't depending upon 1,000,000 restaurant tours perspectives on what's green for this restaurant tour. Recycling is good for that one. It's only if it's 100% organic and so having common standards for the industry is quite important. Having them be transparent. Support. Once the restaurant steps are verified, we educate the restaurants and consumers about these environment issues and get the 14,000,000 restaurant employees in this country excited and we communicate which restaurants meet our standards with certified green restaurant certification. We're actually throwing an event in New York September 16th. To launch a green dining destination, flat iron. So we promote the restaurants that are doing the right thing. We have the largest database of green solutions for the restaurant industry. We've been around for 34 years and have more experience than any other organization on the planet Greening restaurants. Now, what restaurants have we certified? We've certified the cafeteria in the Congress. We were actually I'm. I'm not going to make a political statement one way or another, but we were one of the first acts. Of Congress many years ago, where we got kicked out, they didn't like, they didn't like that they were that we were certified. So we've also greened the Statue of Liberty. We bring the Super Bowl. American Express as a client. Morgan Stanley is a client. Harvard and almost any university, Princeton and many, many more mom and pops fast food, fine dining and more in 47 States and Canada. What can you do as a consumer if you're a business owner or a restaurant owner? Work with us. We'll help you make improvements, get you certified. If you're not a restaurant owner or not a restaurant employee, what can you do as a consumer? The average millennial eats up five times a week, and actually just two years ago, we had data that Americans spent 20% more in dining out than on groceries. And that's a trend that will continue by taking the following steps, you can have a significant impact on creating a more environment sustainable world. When you dine out, find a certified green restaurant and dine green.com. When you go there, thank the restaurant manager owner for doing that, you will reinforce what they're doing. They will be excited to continue. On that path. If you don't go to a certified restaurant, encourage your favorite restaurants to become certified. You could do that on a DM, on social or comment on their posts. You can do that by sending them an e-mail. If you're really ambitious, you could even call them encouraging them to go green. And when you dine out, you could speak to the manager telling this is important. When I give speeches to consumers, they say, when's the last time you went to a restaurant and had a hat on saying that you were a green consumer? You didn't. You're invisible unless you speak to the people at the restaurant. They don't know you care. Choose restaurants that are walkable or allow for public transportation. Choose menu items that are low on the food chain. And encourage people who aren't here today to spread the word. That's a little bit about why green should be at the top, what we do and what you could do. Thank you very much.
Michael Dorf:
Nice.
Alexander McCobin:
Thank you, Michael and Michael turned on over to you to to share your experience and the work that you've been doing as well.
Michael Dorf:
Well, I don't have a slideshow for you or or the audience. I I really enjoy just watching and seeing those stats. I think one of the most important things Michael said was sung by Jack Johnson in his very prophetic song of reduce, reuse, recycle. We've been trying to live that credo the best we can in the 17 years at City Winery has been around. We are more than a restaurant, as you know, we're we're an event space and and a concert facility. And because we have so much traffic coming through our doors. We we really do move a lot of product both in the front of house and in the back of House and so trying to do the right thing by reducing and reusing before recycling has been an effort we've done without an association and. And so I applaud Michael, what you're doing to this is really important to spread, spread the word, not. Not every business is conscious. And thinks about the world to in in a tikuna alum kind of improve the the planet the best possible. When when we started thinking about City Winery, one of the interesting things was knowing that we have so many bodies coming through. Our facility and they're primarily here to to, to have joy and see music, but they also are drinking and and eating. We really focus on well, if they're drinking with us and they're coming to City Winery and we hopefully are selling them wine. Saying what? And we're going to move so much wine by the glass. What would be the most efficient way to actually sell that? And it was not bottles. When you look at bottles and this was not in the stats that Michael, you know, presented but the wine industry alone. Uses 32 billion single use bottles a year, 32 billion single use bottles a year. And when you when you when you observe the path of glass being manufactured in either Mexico or China. It being sent an empty bottle to California to be filled with four glasses of wine to be then shipped with other bottles in a case that goes into a container in a truck and use fossil fuels to ship it, say to New York, where I am today to be opened and poured into a. Glass and you get 4 glasses in the bottle and then that bottle either get recycled or discarded, thrown in an ocean, but in America only about 20 something percent of glass gets recycled. So one out of five gets. Put back into a recycling container shipped back using fossil fuel all the way back to Mexico or China to then be intensely melted down into the same vessel. To then be reshipped to California to fill with four more glasses of wine to be shipped to New York so we can be drinking four more glasses of wine. You think about that. And it's one of the most inefficient systems, you know, ever created. It is burning so much energy and wasting so much effort when. I keep this on my desk. Here's my only show and tell this is an old seltzer box. Well, you know, and like the milk industry and some of the older industries that you know, did think about being more efficient and less wasteful. You know, you'd reuse this water seltzer bottle and you'd put all six back in your milk carton or what have you to get refilled and reused. And you weren't wasting and throwing away disposable single use bottles and.
Michael Dorf:
A lot of the industry, whether it's bottles and wine or food, we need to start thinking about how do we reuse some of the same instruments and and and vessels so that we're not wasting. And we looked at all aspects of us of our business, not just wine, although we are saving truckloads a month. Of glass. Given the volume on a very good Saturday night, we might do between all 16 locations and City Winery. Something like 10,000 glasses of wine. That's a lot of bottles that we're saving by you by by pouring wine when we make the wine, it goes into a barrel classic, you know, aging and getting some flavors of oak. Sometimes a little more steel than oak. But instead of when it's ready to go into a bottle, we put it back into a stainless steel keg to go on. Tap and it preserves really well and obviously is much, much more efficient. So we we we look at our wine sales that way we look back into the kitchen about the types of plates we use only glass where we don't use plastic, we have a backstage stainless steel bottle that we give to artists to reuse. We do not allow plastic in our facility, no art, and sometimes we get some musicians to go. I need my Evian bottle and it's like. Sorry man, you know we're giving you the green M&M's back, sage, but we're not giving you your water bottle. You gotta, you know, use ours. And so we have a very good water filtration system, but you gotta reuse your bottle and we make the staff live it, and we make, you know, our we, you know, we walk the, the, the walk if you will to talk. So we try and think about it and how to integrate sort of green, sustainable life in, in, in, in all of our practices.
Alexander McCobin:
So Michael, I love the example of what you're doing specifically at City Winery to change the industry and the connection between the restaurant industry and other industries. Obviously, the wine industry, the events industry, the music industry that you're tying together. And so I've got a question about that for both of you and I'll say for anyone who's listening, if you have any questions for either. Either Michael, please type them into the Q&A box and we'll get to as many as possible for you in this. Time, but for anyone who's not in the restaurant industry, you're giving some great examples and recommendations for what restaurant the restaurant owners and the industry can do. But for others who may be adjacent to the restaurant industry in some way in business, what can they do to encourage more sustainable practices or help the restaurants that they work with? Adopt more sustainable practices.
Michael Dorf:
I just want to make one point which hopefully is on point. For you is a. We're not doing this to change the industry. I think we have a little different mission. I'm going to get my next prop sorry, but this is my ebada hat, Ebadi ORF is my nickname in the office. We are a profit making company our focus is to make money and sometimes decisions one might think to, to save the planet go more green are. Are more costly and would affect EBITDA negatively and that's not necessarily the case. You know the the, the work we're doing and again not to change the world, but just simply within our own 4 walls. Is both EBITDA positive and smart for our own bottom line and obviously also has positive effect for the world. And I I just I'm sure Michael the same thing you know net net when you look at some of the things that we're doing, it's it it, it can have a positive. Impact also on on the business itself, bottom line, not necessarily just you know for the good of the planet of course. Course. If if all of a sudden you know, one could look at the macro effect of our bringing the temperature of the planet down a few degrees and and you know, the less insurance costs passed on and you know the macro is tremendous. And in fact, having just a, a, a place for our children to live. Is a pretty positive thing to do, and I would be willing to lose a little more money if I could, you know, get that. But I don't think it has. It's not 0 sum, you know, and mutually. Exclusive you can do. You can make smart decisions to go more green that actually have a positive impact on your bottom line, and I would argue your customers and our customers actually care about the good things we're doing and we'll become more frequent guests because they know they're supporting a more sustainable. Company and that that does have positive impact on the bottom line.
Michael Oshman:
Yeah. I would I echo what you're saying, Michael, is, you know, coming from the vantage point of of a non profit having you know, although we talked about a lot of environmental data, you know I I when we speak to restaurants we don't talk about any of that all that data I showed you the fish all of that. I'm doing it because. I don't think I have an exclusive restaurant group. I think it's the general population. We don't talk about that really. We have a 30 minute presentation. We're talking about money savings PR. We're talking about 79% of consumers prefer dining at a certified green restaurant, 78%, not just a millennials, but employees in general prefer working at a certified. Restaurant these restaurants, it's not guaranteed. But they could eat. Save 3 thousand $5000 a year, you know restaurant New York that's grossing many millions of dollars for them to say 3, five, $6000 a year going through our program and that's after working with us after implementing this buying this thing and that thing they can net many thousands of dollars a year they're making their. Employees happy. Yeah. How do you make your employees happier? Yes. Treat them well, pay them well, et cetera. But there's only so much you can do. But interestingly, doing this great thing from the environment makes them more loyal. We've heard that from many, many, many restaurants. So I would argue we are so idealistic in our organization. And we don't talk much about the environment to restaurants because we don't want the one or two or five or 10% just of the people who already know we want the 90%. We want the people who think there might be a clash between profit and the environment. We want to convince them. Then do this for yourself. Go save $3000, come back in three months and tell us how much your employees are happy. Tell us the last time you were on CNN or Fox News. We've been in the media over 1000 times. We've been on a soap opera. We've gotten our we've been in the Wall Street Journal. These are it's generally good for restaurants to do this, and then restaurants will often say. But if I do this, this and this, it's going to cost me more and I'm going to say yes, just like anything you could do it intelligently or you could do it in a way that doesn't make sense for you. And that's part of what we help restaurants do is we say no, no, no. Your first step isn't to get solar. Solar is great. And when you're ready for it, we're here to help you. That isn't your first step. We've got to do the ABC's before we learn to read. Before we write books before we become a Pulitzer Prize winner. So let's do it in a in an evolutionary way that is good for them. And by the time we get to Step 2, they've seen the benefits of step. 1.
Alexander McCobin:
So I'd love that you to emphasize this point, because so much of the misunderstanding about sustainability is that I think that people believe that you have to increase costs, that this isn't something that will actually help with the bottom line. But there are ways that it actually can be, especially when you're getting creative and you're looking at the right partnerships. So let me ask the two of you following on that. What are some of the simple ABC steps that you've either taken Michael at City Winery or the OR that you've recommended to, or seen other restaurants to Michael Oshman to to combine those two things, helping the bottom line while also helping the environment at the same time?
Michael Dorf:
Well, I'll, I'll start with a couple of we can. We can trade twos on on this Michael. And since we have the same name, first name, you know we'll just say Michael said it. You know, we we mentioned solar in the presentation. I mean we actually have a location in the Hudson Valley that has hydroelectric generation and decision making. When we were redoing the facility. Was do we make an investment in? The fixing up of the hydro in order to generate enough electricity to to rationalize the expense and and while it was a big number, it got rationalized in in four years of the investment and and then literally saving about $100,000 a year of. Of utility bills, that's a real. To me, smart, obvious, you know math question and yes is using hydroelectric self generated electricity better than going into grid and who knows where that you know energy is coming from for sure but financially boom easy decision. You know, being in New York City, it's not easy to or even Chicago, surrounded by high rises necessarily to have that much solar but wear appropriate solar. Is now with you know the the panels and the the rebates and the you know the the investment, the ROI can be 3-4 or five years and you're you're saving either 50% or 100% on your. It's a really smart decision to be to be doing.
Michael Oshman:
I I would. And and that's the tragedy. All the people in the country and the world who think that you're an altruistic do gooder who who isn't making financial sense. And that's the perspective that some people still have on solar. And. And I remember I got solar in my house. Maybe a decade and a half ago and it's gotten cheaper. The panel's gotten cheaper, everything's gotten more efficient. But I paid for it maybe five years, four years, six years, somewhere in that ballpark. And after I paid it off. And people were complaining about the bills going. Up I was. Like oh, I don't. Have a bill. And you know, take that on a scale from a residential to a business and it's exactly what Michael's saying. It will only the cost of electricity will only go higher. So you're $100,000 savings could be $105,000 savings next year when the. Cost of electricity goes higher than 110. So solar is amazing, but Michael, as you said, you know, solar, wind, hydro, those are all amazing things to do, but they're not something that every restaurant could do. Unfortunately, unfortunately, you know, places in California with more roof space, Arizona have more of an opportunity. We have a list of steps that we call no brainers. Every restaurant should have done that a year or two ago. They're not as exciting as solar or hydro, but they could save a lot, you know, putting on. You know the plastic things that hang from a walk in can save enough energy that would power a normal home. You know, that's pretty amazing getting everybody on the most efficient LED bulbs can save up to 10% on a total electricity bill. Changing over the spray valves. They clean all of your nice. Dishes before they went in the dishwasher. Somebody sprayed a high pressure valve there. They could use a lot of water or a little. And there are some that are highly, highly efficient. Use the pressure really well and having one that is more efficient could save a one or $2000 in a year, and they're saving the water, which is money. They're saving the the natural gas or the electricity, which is money. And they're also saving. The you know, sometimes we were needing to pay fees in terms of the amount of water that goes down. So there's a lot that is saved there looking at offering water just by choice. Nice. When you walk into a restaurant. I'll bet you if we were to serving people here, you want water, you don't. You want water? You don't. So not everybody's getting water, so it's wasted. Provide the customer service. Make it a nice thing. Who would like water today? And then whoever wants it has it. And those who didn't. You're saving that water. You're saving the labor. You're saving the heat the the associated costs, the chemicals to clean it. There's a lot of money and energy and water that can be saved. So between lighting and spray valves and aerators and toilets shifting over to reusables, there's a lot that could be done. Where we don't scare the restaurant, we actually change their opinion because we're able to say all these things are going to save you this amount of money and then they're in. Then in year two or three we could start talking about some more exciting things. But then they trust us and they don't just trust us. They trust the process that doing. Good can be good. Not only good for the bottom line, but they actually realize it's better for the bottom line. They're competitors who aren't doing these great things for the world are actually operating a less efficient business. Their bottom line is less efficient.
Michael Dorf:
Well, you're on. You're on.
Alexander McCobin:
I was just going to say I just want to say thank you both of you. Unfortunately that that we are out of time now and I want to respect your times and your busy schedules, but there are some powerful insights here for everyone on the ability to use sustainability to actually improve the bottom line for for the restaurant industry, some simple steps for them to take and then some exciting steps to move forward. On and I wanted to invite anyone who wasn't able to ask a question or watching the recording and is interested in. Us to reach out and. Let's know if you've got questions for either Michael, happy to pass it along or facilitate a connection if they're up for it and just want to say thank you to both of you for taking the time with the Liberty Ventures community today and all the incredible work that you do day in and day out.
Michael Oshman:
Thank you, Alexander. Thank you, Michael. Thank you everybody.
Alexander McCobin:
Have a great. Day, everyone. You too, so much.