Crain's Business Cleveland: A Twist of Green

A twist of green

With a twist of green, an environmentally-friendly restaurant opens on East Fourth in downtown Cleveland.

By JOHN BOOTH

4:30 am, July 14, 2008

While Jonathon Sawyer's plans call for The Greenhouse Tavern to have an actual greenhouse on its East Fourth Street roof in downtown Cleveland, the chef and owner is aiming for an environmentally friendly approach to restaurateuring that will go well beyond its most visible symbol.

By building with conservation and sustainability in mind, from plumbing to appliances and even the restaurant's menu, Mr. Sawyer said he hopes to open the region's first eatery with a seal of approval from the Boston-based Green Restaurant Association.

“It's important to us to bring it (the seal) to Ohio both because we think we could be ahead of the curve nationally, and it's ultimately just doing the right thing,” said Mr. Sawyer, a chef/partner in Bier Markt and Bar Cento on West 25th Street in Ohio City. He expects The Greenhouse Tavern to open the doors on its 25- by 100-foot Corts Building space by the end of the year.

From the start, there has been a thread of keeping things simple to conserve resources.

“We're going to do the least possible additions that we can,” Mr. Sawyer said. “We're not going to rip down walls just to put up more walls. We're essentially going to strip the floor, because it's just tile, and we're just going to polish the concrete.”

The walls will be surfaced with a recycled plaster material, and the bar top will be made with a mix of binding material and glass that comes in part from used wine bottles at Bar Cento.

That “repurposing” philosophy will extend to the tables, chairs, decorations and even kitchen implements, as Mr. Sawyer did at Bar Cento, where he says “absolutely nothing was brand-new.”

Waterless urinals, too

Not to say there's no place for new technology: Moen's low-flow faucets certified under the U.S Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) ratings will be installed in the hand sinks, and the men's restroom will include waterless urinals.

“In terms of kitchen design, there's a lot of new high-efficiency equipment, from dishwashers that save you three gallons a cycle to pilot (lights) that turn off automatically on your stoves to hood vents that are sensor-correlated” to save energy, Mr. Sawyer said.

The Greenhouse's greenhouse, though, is easily the biggest single piece of the project, and Mr. Sawyer admits it most will likely take a few years before its efficiency takes root. His goal is to have a self-sufficient source for greens and herbs using composted material from the restaurant and reclaimed water.

“In the long run, it will be a huge cost savings for us,” he said. “At Cento, we spend at least $300 on herbs a week. And it's something that is really easy to do in a greenhouse.”

Mr. Sawyer also plans to craft the tavern's menu using as many Northeast Ohio ingredients as possible.

“It's really going to be about how good our pork is, how good our lamb is, how good our beef is,” he said. Produce will come largely from the region's farms, though Mr. Sawyer says he'll also factor in time and energy used in its gathering.

“You've got to let the menu be versatile,” he said. “You can't go to the market every day just to say that you're doing it. It's hard for some people as chefs to understand that it's OK to let that dictate what your menu is.”

Green requires green

All these efforts come at a price, and it's added a significant chunk to the financing of the project.

“We started with a business that was $300,000 to $400,000, and now we're at a $1.2 million business plan,” said Mr. Sawyer, who estimates making the tavern eco-friendly accounts for “a couple hundred thousand” of that price tag.

To fund the project, Mr. Sawyer said, “we have some investment backers — some are from New York, some are from here in Cleveland, some of them are family — and then we have a small SBA loan as well.”

So far, the dining services at Antioch College in Yellow Springs represent Ohio's only Green Restaurant Association-certified eatery, though association founder and executive director Michael Oshman said 250 restaurants nationwide either are certified or are working with the nonprofit toward meeting its criteria.

“We've tripled or so in the past year,” Mr. Oshman said of the association's restaurant roster. He noted that while 75% to 90% of those members are established eateries looking to go green, interest is growing among owners opening new restaurants, even faced with the industry's notoriously fickle environment.

Mr. Sawyer said he hopes Greenhouse Tavern succeeds not only as a business, but as an example, too.

“Ultimately, it was having kids and that responsibility of bringing kids up in a healthy environment that really made us want to make a difference,” he said.