Like millions of others, I used to have a fantasy of running a café. It would be an uncompromisingly boho place and I would lounge around in the back like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca with my sunglasses on and my existential textbooks and Sister Ray playing on loop throughout the day – the 37 minute version.
Modelled on the City Café in Edinburgh (in the good old days), it would be staffed by impossibly louche art school students who would bar entry to all but the beautiful and the damned. Anita Pallenberg would drop by sometimes and we would smoke Gauloise and drink absinthe and laugh all day.
I even did a bit of scouting for this in Oxford, of all places, many years ago. My first problem was that, thanks to an O-level in economics, an unshakeable voice had already lodged in my head, demanding to know if the business plan was sustainable.
It’s a question which is still with me today as I write about the hospitality sector that we know and love in Brighton and Hove. Brighton and Hove’s new food strategy is launching this week and there will be plenty of focus on the 1200 restaurants, coffee shops, pop-ups, mobile units, takeaways and unlicensed establishments that we have in the town. These will have a major role to play in the behaviour change necessary if we are to reduce carbon emissions in our town.
It’s a brutal business
Running a restaurant is a brutal business and, till now, simply surviving has been what sustainability has been about. Many restaurants struggle and many close every year. There is constant churn. These small businesses have to negotiate inflation, rising rents, high energy and raw material prices and the cost-of-living crisis that has curtailed demand.
And the small independent cafés have it extra hard. They have to compete against the chains which have economies of scale in everything they do. Many of the independent café owners will pay themselves less than the minimum wage they pay their staff.
Now, of course, sustainability has a different meaning, one rooted in environmental responsibility, although exactly what that requires is surprisingly contested. One customer’s locally-reared lovingly grass-fed ‘in harmony with nature’ Aberdeen Angus steer is another’s cereal-gobbling, greenhouse gas-producing ruminant.
The sustainability journey
Climate:Change has provided us with a framework for looking at the Brighton food system and I’ve written in these pages about the Sustainability Toolkit and how some Brighton businesses are adjusting to a more environmentally sustainable model, not least to help the business’s bottom line.
It’s a substantial endeavour with rigour and academic attention and 49 venues have now joined the scheme. The checklist has been included in the new Food Strategy.
Restaurants Brighton is running workshops to support the scheme and, at the latest one, last week, I was struck to hear that initial steps have been taken to explore climate-friendly meal guidelines with the Food Partnership and the Council. We know already this is a key area, but it’s also a contentious one. Many people don’t like to be badgered about their diet.
Two lovely places
This column involves me visiting some of the Toolkit graduates and exploring the challenges. This time I went to a couple of places that were new to me. Both were terrific with welcoming staff, stylish décor and a bit of buzz about them.
Lost in the Lanes in Nile Street was a great space with lots of room, friendly waiters, and a menu based on numerous small plates. The restaurant uses smart energy meters to monitor and control energy use, does considerable local sourcing and ensures all farmed fish meets sustainability certifications. Very encouragingly, to minimise waste, ‘doggy bags’ are available upon request.
We had a selection of half a dozen items including exceptional locally produced asparagus washed down with the equally excellent, very locally produced, very delicate Albourne Bacchus. There wasn’t much on show about the sustainability policy but the website is advertising a one-night-only chef collaboration for later this month, where ‘every dish will be sustainably sourced, locally foraged, and zero waste’.
It’s encouraging to see this being used as a selling point.
In Hove a few days later I stopped into Nord on Western Road. Nord is a sustainability ‘Champion’ and is committed to energy conservation and waste reduction, maintaining systematic energy records, only turning on equipment when needed and keeping the menu small and focused to ensure minimum waste. We had some exceptional cake, which was relatively expensive but it was easily enough for two and it was very moreish indeed. And I ate it all myself.
The barista knew exactly what a long black was, which cannot be assumed even in the demanding world of coffee shops, and that was very agreeable too. All in all it was a very pleasing, if rushed, 45 minutes.
As I prepared to write up these visits I realised the two places had a puzzling feature in common – and that was a lack of any publicity advertising the Sustainability Toolkit or the sustainability journey they were on. They weren’t showing the sticker and there wasn’t any information on the menu.
Greenhushing
When I investigated this further I found there is already a term for this behaviour: “Greenhushing”. It’s a phenomenon sufficiently significant that even the masters of our universe are taking note. KPMG writes: “Greenhushing is the practice where companies deliberately under-report or withhold information about their environmental efforts and achievements, choosing to stay silent rather than risk accusations of greenwashing or be accused of exaggerating efforts.”
It also appears that some of these restaurants might be anxious as regards the ongoing culture wars. They don’t want to have their competitors and neighbours suggesting they are, God forbid, too ‘woke’ or are ‘virtue signalling’.
Let’s say no more than that we need to offer some support here. The customers need to show appreciation for the efforts of those restaurants that have taken the plunge and the restaurants need to be a bit braver (and be rewarded for being brave).
I repeatedly go back to the refrain that Brighton likes to think of itself as ‘a progressive city’. Mostly it is but we need to wave the progressive flag more.
In the words of that old cliché, we need to be the change that we say we want.
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