Dan Rosenthal was vacationing on Saint Barth’s last year when a dead loggerhead sea turtle washed up on the beach. The loggerhead is a threatened species, and when the local paper reported that this one had swallowed a plastic bag, Rosenthal had a crisis of conscience. His Loop-based casual-Italian minichain Sopraffina Marketcaffe went through 400,000 nonbiodegradable petroleum-based plastic bags a year. And his 89-year-old mother was a sea turtle activist on Longboat Key, Florida.
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The problem, he discovered, was that he could easily go broke going green. The printed takeout bags he was using at the time cost about three cents apiece, compared to ten cents for biodegradable corn-based bags. “That’s a seven-cent differential on 400,000—$28,000 a year,” he says. Rosenthal, who also owns the Loop restaurants Trattoria No. 10 and Poag Mahone’s, decided to make the switch anyway. But the prices on other green disposable wares—plates, utensils, takeout containers, toilet paper—were similarly prohibitive, and in many cases the products weren’t even available in the midwest.
He envisioned a local restaurant co-op whose combined buying power might help lower prices as well. But how to find members? “We went to the Pied Piper of hospitality in Chicagoland, who knows everybody and knows all things—Ina Pinkney,” Rosenthal says. The owner of Ina’s, a homey restaurant in the market district, and a consummate networker, Pinkney assembled an e-mail list of her industry contacts and other potentially interested parties. In late October she hosted an exploratory meeting for the group, which Rosenthal had named the Green Chicago Restaurant Co-op. More than 100 people showed up, including representatives from big corporations Lettuce Entertain You and Levy Restaurants as well as from usual suspects like North Pond and Lula Cafe.
The co-op currently is a loose federation. There’s no membership fee, and those who join aren’t required to buy green. But Rosenthal sees even good-faith commitment as contributing to momentum. The group plans to add more eco-friendly products—toilet paper is next. Other future projects include a joint recycling program. And on February 1 one of the co-op’s allies, Hilton Chicago purchasing manager Mary Ohnemus, is organizing a free trade show for hospitality professionals featuring more than 100 green manufacturers and suppliers.
