For Some Restaurants, Waste Was Last Straw

When Judy Forman first decided to serve take-out dinners at her popular Golden Hill breakfast and lunch spot, she had one worry: the plastic packaging problem.

“I hate Styrofoam. Hate to eat out of it. Hate to put it in a microwave,” said the proprietor of the Big Kitchen, who searched for a biodegradable alternative in vain. So Judy the Beauty, as she is known to her regulars, opted to spare the landfill altogether.

Last month, when Forman introduced her new dinner menu, she also announced she would serve her food on fine china or not at all. In order to purchase her cassoulets, stews and stroganoffs, Forman’s customers must bring their own casserole dishes--or borrow one of her “loaners,” a set of sturdy, ceramic pans hand-made specially for her dinner crowd.

Forman is not the only San Diego restaurateur to look for pro-Earth options. Particularly in the wake of Earth Day, more local eateries are preaching the merits of conservation and reusable products. And in order to change customers’ habits, these enviro-conscious entrepreneurs seem willing to bribe, coax and even scold the very people who keep them in business.

Table tents at a Hillcrest ice cream store, for example, politely request that patrons take only one napkin. A Thai restaurant nearby offers a cash incentive: 5% off the bill to those who bring their own plates and utensils. And a California-based hot dog vending chain is urging its clientele to save the Earth a sip at a time.

“Due to the detrimental (effects) of plastic on our environment, Hot Dog on a Stick will only issue lids and straws upon request,” reads a hand-lettered sign displayed on the cash register in the company’s downtown San Diego store. “Please consider our environment before asking.”

The eateries that have instituted such policies share at least one thing in common: after witnessing wastefulness day in and day out, their employees simply got annoyed. Why, they asked, isn’t there a guilt-free way to wrap food to-go? Why do so many patrons grab fistfuls of napkins, only to toss most of them, unused, on the way out the door?

Convinced that the answers to these questions lay in provoking their customers to think before they waste, these business people set about inventing creative ways to tweak the collective consciousness. And while they know it will take more than lid-less cups or napkin abstinence to save the world, they say if you have to start somewhere, it might as well be with them.

“Somebody’s got to start,” said Mary Ciminelli, the manager of Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop in Hillcrest, who has given more than a little thought to overcoming what she calls San Diegans’ “over-consumption habits.”

Ciminelli begins with her employees, training them to ask customers not if they want a bag but if they need one. She supports that ethic by example, recycling all the corrugated paper and plastic jugs that come through the store. And last summer, she asked an employee who had pretty penmanship to design a table tent to discourage waste.

“Save a Tree. Please take just one napkin per person,” said the tiny sign, which soon caught the eye of Ben & Jerry’s executives, who decided to print up thousands of them (on recycled paper, of course) and distribute them to stores throughout the country.

Dan Noble, the executive vice president at EnviroQuest, a San Diego-based environmental research and consulting firm, cautions that it may take some time before such “fits and starts” of environmentalism in the marketplace prompt major changes in the industry. But on the individual level, Noble said a sign at the check-out or a bring-your-own-plate policy can help alter behavior by reaching customers at a “decision point,” before they’ve been environmentally reckless.

“They’re right at the point where they have to make a choice,” he said, imagining his own reaction to a straws-on-request sign on the cash register. “In the first place, I’d be a bit put off--’Who’s Hot Dog on a Stick to tell me about the environment?’ But in the second place, I would think about it. And if I wasn’t taking my drink in the car or didn’t need a lid, I’d skip it.”

Such change doesn’t always come easy, however. Even Noble, who makes his living evaluating environmental problems, has sometimes had trouble turning his good intentions into action. He said he and his wife dutifully bought a reusable canvas shopping bag to take to the grocery store--with embarrassing results.

“I don’t think we’ve reused it once,” he admitted. “We keep forgetting to take the dang thing into the store.”

It was that kind of embarrassment that Hot Dog on a Stick wasn’t eager to inspire, according to Diane Barham. Before coming up with its plastic-saving measures, the company, founded by Barham’s father, considered the possible backlash of “shaming” patrons into going lid-less. In order not to offend anyone, she said, the company merely suggested, but did not require, that its vendors display the sign.

“So many customers expect all the goodies--the straw, the lid, the box, the bag. We didn’t want to turn people off,” Barham said, joking that too heavy-handed an approach might drive irate customers from the store screaming, “Well, dammit, I will use a straw! I’ll use two straws! I will have my straw and my lid!”

The stores that dreaded such outbursts, however, were pleasantly surprised. Customer reaction was positive.

“People are not flocking to us because we don’t insist on using straws and lids. I can’t say that,” Barham said with a laugh. “But a customer might come back a little more frequently.”

Su-Mei Yu, the owner of Saffron Restaurant, said that since Earth Day, when she first began offering a 5% discount to people who bring their own plates and forks, she has developed a small clientele of dish-toting regulars. For take-out orders of her Thai chicken dishes, Yu still uses plastic foam containers because she can’t find anything else that’s spill-proof. (“I feel very guilty,” she says, “but I need some other products that work.”)

But two of her college-age customers have even come up with a way to assuage their consciences on that score as well: they wash the plastic foam cartons and re-use them each time they return.

“It’s a matter of being courteous and trying to explain to people, and slowly it’s working,” said Yu, a native of Thailand, where until not long ago, buying a meal of noodles from a local vendor meant bringing your own dish. To change habits, she says, requires “rethinking what you think is convenient for you and what it means in the long run for you and other people. If you don’t want to do that, there is no solution.”

Ciminelli agreed. “One person can make a difference,” she said, pointing to the national impact of her napkin-saving idea. “It’s one of the simplest things you can do. It’s like not running the water while you brush your teeth.”

The simpler, the better, according to Noble, who says when you’re asking people to change their ways, convenience is a major selling point. So is price. He points to the success of the sports bottles now being sold by AM PM Mini Markets and other convenience stores and fast-food restaurants around Southern California. The gimmick: buy a 32 oz. plastic, no-spill container for less than one dollar and refill as often as you like for about half that.

“There’s a good example of something that’s not being marketed as an environmental product, but ends up being one,” he said, adding that once people get used to re-using a product, “it will become habit forming. Once you get into a new habit groove, that’s just reality.”

Ultimately, of course, Noble said the force that drives San Diegans to frequent one eatery over another is not packaging, but the quality of the food. If the ice cream isn’t creamy, no one will care how many napkins are on hand. If the lemonade is sour, no one will want a straw.

Dan Bradford, a Navy medic who lives near the Big Kitchen, agreed. The restaurant is convenient, he said as he came to pick up dinner one night recently, and its plastic foam containers is an added plus. But the main reason he is a repeat customer, he said, was the spinach lasagna he was about to carry home in his casserole dish.

“The first consideration would be the food--it’s always good,” said Bradford, who looked forward as well to steamed vegetables, salad, bread and a brownie, all for less than $7. “But definitely, the trash bag fills up enough as it is. I don’t need to take any more (trash) home with me.”