About Sustainability, Food, and Small Businesses

About Sustainability, Food, and Small Businesses

Last week I published another big piece — my first major feature for Eater and as the editor of Eater Dallas. Before I got the job, I wrote a profile of Restaurant Beatrice, a Cajun place that opened in the spring. The staff was already discussing programs they wanted to implement: planting a herb garden, composing, and working with a local farm to source food. They were already working towards becoming certified as a B corporation. There are only something like 30 restaurants that are B corps in America and Canada — in an industry where profit margins are so small, it's tough to sacrifice any additional money, even if it is in the interest of doing better.

There were a lot of big ideas for a small business (it's owned and run by Michelle Carpenter, a half-Asian woman whose family is from Japan and Louisiana, who also happens to be gay and the owner of Zen Sushi). And the business executed several of them.

I went with them to visit Restorative Farms in Dallas's Fair Park — when we went, the state fair was about to start, and its little hydroponic grow trailer was sitting in the shadow of the massive Ferris wheel. And to a sustainability-themed dinner the restaurant put on with Maker's Mark, the largest distillery that is a B corp, where an entire hog was butchered and utilized snout to tail to serve diners. And I found out that what the restaurant has been doing has had an unintended impact: many of the companies they order from have started creating programs, from booze to meats, that meet their specifications. That allows other restaurants to order more sustainable goods from suppliers that are led by POC, women, and other marginalized communities.