SUPER FOOD Local restaurateurs mainstream sustainability practices

By Kierstin Gunsberg

For local restaurateurs, sustainability is not just a conversation, it’s a business model.

Built out from the skeleton of the former Ham Bonz building along Traverse City’s East Eighth Street corridor, Leslie Bilbey and her husband/business partner Josh Gray have renovated the former breakfast hot spot into an equally hopping burger joint, Oakwood Proper Burgers.

During the peak summer months, Bilbey says they easily sling out between 800 and 900 patties a week, along with sides of hand-cut garlic parmesan fries and peanut butter milkshakes.

Supporting local farmers and suppliers

Behind the menu items, however, Bilbey lists off local ingredients in place of traditionally sourced ones that include Michigan-raised pork bacon and their signature brioche buns, baked fresh daily just across the street at Common Good Bakery.

Even their shakes get the local treatment – peanut butter from Detroit’s iconic Velvet Peanut Butter is spun into ice cream from Michigan’s single-source MOO-ville Creamery, where the wholesale dairy products are made using milk from the creamery’s cows.

Across town, Lake Street Coffee Co. owner Leslie Elsen is also sourcing from MOOville Creamery for all of her milk-based beverages and creamers.

“We use local vendors wherever possible, even as a small mobile espresso cart. No impact is too small,” she said.

Elsen has been integrating sustainable practices into her new business from the start, partnering with local bean roaster Fortunate Coffee Co. for all of her brews along with Light of Day Tea and Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate for specialty drinks.

Sustainability through zero waste

Sustainability in the local food and beverage industry doesn’t end with locally sourced ingredients. According to a 2023 estimate by ReFED, a national nonprofit that’s working toward food waste reduction, 33% of all food in the U.S. goes to waste. That’s why local industry leaders like Elsen and Bilbey factor the goal of zero-waste into their business models.

“We cross-utilize many of our ingredients to have nearly zero food waste. Everything is fresh and other than the ice cream – never frozen,” Bilby said. “This allows us flexibility in our weekly orders and to have a nearly net-zero carryover each week.”

Overlooking Crystal River, recently-opened cafe The Mill Glen Arbor curates an entire menu of chilled soups, straightfrom-the-farm salads, and whole-grain hand pies around the zero-waste concept.

Head Baker Miriam Geenan and Executive Chef Bobby Thoits say there’s no such thing as a bi-product in their kitchen. Instead, extra ingredients are repurposed into a fresh item, something that inspired Geenan’s cinnamon and cardamom spiced “bread crumb granola,” featuring breadcrumbs from the cafe’s unused loaves that are thrown into a dehydrator before being baked into crunchy clusters.

Thoits says that the dehydrator is one of the Mill’s most important tools in eliminating kitchen waste.

“Every time we juice citrus, we save the peels and dehydrate them to make spice blends,” he said.

Thoits says another way The Mill is mitigating food waste is by utilizing in-season fruits and veggies from local producers like Lakeview Hill Farm before they spoil.

“If one of our farms has a beautiful piece of produce for only a week or two, then we will put a dish on for two weeks, while simultaneously finding creative ways to preserve ingredients at the peak of their flavor for use later on down the line,” he said.

Using ingredients at their peak to reduce waste and their carbon footprint is a practice Stephanie Lee Wiitala and Jonathan Dayton have been implementing in their Traverse City breakfast hub Sugar 2 Salt (S2S) since they opened in 2017.

“We use everything from the greens on carrot and beet tops to the herb stems to make infused oils,” said Wiitala. “We work with a local farmer who picks up all of our food scraps that we collect daily.”

In an area where the agricultural season is limited, and fresh local produce isn’t exactly abundant, they admit that they get tired of using root vegetables and frozen fruits in the off-season.

“By April we are ready for the hoop houses to be offering the first lettuces and microgreens,” she said.

Wiitala says that S2S also opts for products with minimal packaging.

“We hardly ever use a can opener or use products that are coming out of boxes or bags or (are) pre-made,” she said.

Lake Street Coffee Co has also prioritized minimal and sustainable packaging, with Elsen purchasing her cups and lids from Bay Area Recycling for Community

(formerly Bay Area Recycling for Charity), a local nonprofit that offers recycling services and compostable products to promote an environmentally conscious northern Michigan.

“Full compostable products are important to us from a sustainability standpoint,” said Elsen. “There is a big difference between compostable vs. biodegradable vs. recyclable.”

The consumer cost and a shrinking profit margin

When it comes to balancing the financial cost of sustainable practices against the environmental cost, Oakwood’s Bilbey says they spend around 50 cents more per locally sourced bun than they would from a traditional restaurant supplier. Meanwhile their craft beef, which they get from Moraine Park Farms in southern Michigan, is around $2 more per pound.

“We pay just over $8,000-$9,450 more over the course of our 12-week peak summer season just to source our beef and buns,” she said.

It’s a cost that Bilbey says trickles down to their customers, adding that most are not only understanding but supportive of paying a little more for a product that’s both high quality and more sustainable.

She also says that the smashburger joint is intentionally avoiding single-use products like plastic straws, which most of her customers appreciate.

Except some.

“Once, a staff member had a shake thrown at them because we don’t have lids for our shakes,” she said.

Although there are compostable lids, Bilbey says they are interested in challenging paradigms.

“Is a lid even necessary with a thick shake such as ours?” she said. “I mean, if you drop a shake with a lid or without a lid, it’s going to spill no matter what.”

For Elsen’s coffee cart, lids are a must for serving up piping hot beverages on-thego, and she’s willing to spend more on compostables, even if it means an increase in her product’s price point.

But even as some local restaurants raise their prices to accommodate the increased cost of implementing sustainable practices, their profit margin shrinks in comparison to those businesses that use cheaper, traditionally sourced ingredients and single-use products.

For these restaurateurs, sustainability isn’t just a buzzword.

“Our responsibility is not only to our guests tomorrow but also the guests 100 years from now. Our thoughtful practices ensure a fighting chance to save as much biodiversity as we possibly can,” said The Mill’s Geenan.

For more insight into farm-to-table practices, Leslie Bilbey will host a Meet the Farmer event at Oakwood Proper Burgers on Saturday, August 12 at 11 a.m. Tom Dykstra of Moraine