Steal This Idea
Let them ask for it
One of the ways we have found to control food waste has been to not automatically give out toppings for items like burgers. Instead, we will add things like lettuce and tomatoes only if students ask for them.
Menu
On the Eastern front
Most of the ingredients in Eastern European dishes are simple and feel familiar to customers. But if a recipe calls for something that simply won’t play well, most operators have no problem tweaking a recipe.
We launched an Herban Veggie Garden on our patio connected to our cafeteria in downtown Grand Rapids, Mich. We have about 15 planters of herbs and vegetables that we are able to harvest and use during our peak times. This initiative went along with our other sustainable efforts and will give our chefs great organic ingredients year-round.
We collaborated with our sustainable dining interns to create a Basic Cooking Techniques cooking class certification, which ranged from knife skills to sanitation to soups, sauces and proteins. Certification was offered to students who completed all three classes. An additional focus of the class was sourcing and working with local and seasonal foods. It was truly a sustainable life lesson.