Restaurant Stays Green -- and in the Black

By Bill Roth of Entrepreneur.com



According to the National Restaurant Association, almost a million restaurants in the United States generate more than $500 billion annually, employ 13 million people and provide 70 billion meals a year. The Green Economic Revolution has begun to take hold with restaurateurs, and they have lessons your business can learn.

One key element of "going green" is logistics. According to a study done by Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian with the Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan, the average American foodstuff travels an estimated 1,500 miles before being consumed. This is not sustainable at today's fuel prices. And transportation accounts for approximately one-fourth of our country's greenhouse gas emissions.

Typical of how "going green" tangentially creates other benefits, restaurants gain competitive advantage by offering fresher, better-tasting food sourced from local growers. This also contributes to the local economy's prosperity and increases support for local restaurants.

Like your business, running a successful restaurant also requires cost control and aligning with the increasing consumer focus upon "going green." So what would such a green restaurant that does it all -- has compelling taste, strong cost management with competitive advantages and is aligned with consumer desires for healthy food -- look like?

One example is a new franchise that has exploded onto the restaurant scene with the motto, "Saving the earth one pizza at a time." The restaurant is called Pizza Fusion, and it is the first franchise I have seen engineered to build and run a national green restaurant chain.