What does restaurant sustainability really mean?
Restaurant sustainability is about long-term thinking: lasting relationships with producers, development programs for the team and deliberate choices in waste management. If you reduce restaurant sustainability to a green label on the menu, you miss two of those three layers. Guests notice the difference and mention it in their reviews.
Which three layers define sustainability in a restaurant?
Syrco Bakker of Syrco BASÈ breaks sustainability down into three layers: long-term relationships with producers, development programs for his own team and choices in waste management. A restaurant that focuses on product alone stays predictable, just like the classic Michelin-starred restaurant with white tablecloths, silver cutlery and top ingredients sourced from all over the world. Every layer takes time. That time only frees up once repetitive work, such as replying to reviews, is no longer done by hand.
Why are regular producers more sustainable?
A long-term relationship with producers around the restaurant delivers consistent quality and a provenance you can explain. That is the opposite of buying top ingredients from all over the world.
Is team development part of sustainability?
Yes. Development programs for your own team help you keep both knowledge and staff. A restaurant that has to rehire every season is not thinking long term.
What does waste management say about a restaurant?
Waste management shows the choices a kitchen makes behind the scenes. It is the least visible layer, which makes it the most honest test of any sustainability claim.
For me, sustainability is about long-term thinking.
Frequently asked questions
Why does a classic Michelin-starred restaurant feel predictable?
In the Netherlands and Belgium, guests often expect a Michelin star to mean French style: white tablecloths, silver cutlery and the best products from all over the world. Syrco Bakker calls that predictable. A restaurant that wants to stand out goes a layer deeper, for example by choosing local products and building relationships with producers that last for years, instead of following a fixed format.
How does a restaurant get started with sustainability?
A common approach is to start with one layer you can measure. For example, write down which producers you have worked with for longer than a season, what development steps your team can take and which waste streams your kitchen produces. According to Syrco Bakker, sustainability is very diverse. That is why it works better to expand step by step than to try to sort everything out at once.
How do you show that your restaurant operates sustainably?
Guests judge a sustainability claim by what they see and taste for themselves: how provenance is explained, how stable the team is and how consistent the quality stays from one visit to the next. That experience shows up in their reviews on Google and TripAdvisor. It makes sense to respond to those reviews and spell out the choices behind your menu in concrete terms. Generic green buzzwords convince very few people.
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Video transcript
I always felt connected with working with products from around the restaurant. That's also what we did in Katsum with Yuseen. But also, well, there we had to provide a dining experience that fits with the idea of how Dutch or Belgian people see a Michelin-starred restaurant, which is, well, a French-style restaurant, white tablecloths, silver cutlery.
The best products from all around the world. All these things are quite predictable in a way. And for me, it's...
I just want to go... I want to refresh and to go a layer deeper. And for me, sustainability is about long-term thinking.
And that's about... that's... and it's super diverse.
So that's long-term relations with the producers, but also creating development programs for our team. But also, in sustainability, making choices in how we do our waste management. Yeah, these things.