How to run an eco-friendly café business
The general public is becoming increasingly conscious of environmental issues. If you run or are thinking of starting a café, you should carefully consider the best practices to make your business sustainable. Here are some tips to help minimise the environmental impact of your coffee shop.
Consider the origins of your products
Unsurprisingly, the first thing to consider is where your product comes from and whether the way it is grown is problematic.
Coffee farming methods can be destructive in many ways, from deforestation to the exploitation of workers. When considering suppliers, look for certifications to identify which are produced in ways that minimise their environmental impact. Many coffee specialists now offer many environmentally certified products for you to choose from, as well as options including FairTrade coffee beans, so you can ensure the drinks you serve are kinder to both the planet and people working in the coffee supply chain.
Offer rewards for using reusable cups
An excellent way to promote sustainable behaviour among your client base is to offer incentives. Plastic waste is a significant contributor to environmental pollution. Many single-use coffee cups are lined with plastic, making them non-recyclable.
You can encourage people to ditch the single-use plastics by offering rewards for bringing in reusable cups when buying drinks to take away. For example, you could give them discounts, or reward them with points they can use in the future.
There will still be cases where customers will need single-use cups. To minimise the damage caused by this, make sure you use compostable cups and avoid handing out disposable lids alongside these.
Have a varied menu
Our diets have a massive impact on our environment. An individual can significantly reduce their effect on the climate by reducing their consumption of meat and dairy.
If you run a café, you can play an active role in limiting this consumption. Many plant-based alternatives exist to dairy nowadays, so offering an oat milk latte on your menu could encourage people to explore other options. The same goes for your menu. Having various tasty vegan and vegetarian food available can inspire even the most stubborn meat-eaters to try something new.
Catering for different diets also has the added benefit of broadening the appeal of your business, which can help bring in new customers.
Go paperless
It is easy to overlook the impact of receipts, but the way they are manufactured makes some of them unrecyclable. Individually, they are a drop in the ocean, but if you consider the number you hand out over a year, it is easy to see that offering a paperless option would be less harmful.
Most customers will be delighted to have the option of paperless receipts, as it saves them the hassle of holding onto scraps of paper and helps the environment. Doing this is easy to implement as well, so it is a win-win scenario.
Play an active role
Overall, we all have a part to play in reducing our environmental impact on a personal and commercial level. People are waking up to this now, so having a clear strategy to reduce your businesses’ footprint will help the environment and attract environmentally conscious customers to your café.