This is How We Are Incorporating Sustainable Practices in Our Restaurant
We want to set a good example for our colleagues in the restaurant industry by taking responsibility and promoting sustainable business operations.
We want to set a good example for our colleagues in the restaurant industry by taking responsibility and promoting sustainable business operations.
Restaurants have an impact on the environment and society through their activities. Our restaurant is no exception and therefore we want to offer environmentally and socially responsible services to our customers and in an environment that reflects our activities. We also want to set a good example for our colleagues in the restaurant industry by taking responsibility and promoting sustainable business operations.
Sustainability is good for the planet and currently our planet’s future is at the forefront of most people’s mind. In this article we would like to highlight our restaurant that we strive to make as Eco-Minded as possible.
So, what does an Eco-Minded restaurant mean? It refers to how we are aiming to minimise our impact on the environment, by particularly addressing issues like sustainable farming, being more aware of our carbon footprint, shortening our supply chain, food wastage, energy consumption, recycling, and more.
From our point of view, we consider implementing sustainability as an exciting challenge which gives us the opportunity to become more creative and optimistic that we can make an impact. That has led us to bring lots of new flavours and new ideas to our menu and the restaurant’s environment and surroundings. At the same time, we are creating delicious food by controlling how the ingredients are grown from start to finish and by doing so we can ensure the freshest and highest quality of ingredients are being served to our customer’s plate.
We would like to say that sustainability is more than just good for the environment, because it certainly goes beyond that. This is about, among other things like connecting with local farms, implementing zero-waste cooking, and other sustainability initiatives that connects our restaurant more into its surroundings and the community that surrounds our restaurant. By doing this we have noticed that it brings a sense of purpose to our employees, which have a positive impact and attitude, retention, and our important customer service.
The thing is that the drive to promote sustainability should be something for anyone anywhere. Or at least we hope so and most certainly we encourage everyone to do so! But! Implementation like ours doesn't happen overnight. It takes patience, determination, and cooperation with all those responsible for the restaurant. We have maintained our patience and been determined to see this implementation through and are delighted today to see the results it has given. The results have been generated in the way we wanted. Our restaurant has exceptional quality, with culinary wonders and drinks, attentive service and sweeping views of the breath-taking surroundings that create an unforgettable and a unique dining experience. The thing that matters most to us are our customers and their reviews and they confirm we took the right direction towards sustainability and social responsibility in our restaurant.
We consider using seasonal ingredients in our dishes to be one of the easiest sustainable practices. We adapt our menu to the Icelandic seasons in terms of ingredients to provide our customers with the freshest, most nutritional produce. Although we also consider the seasons in Europe and how they can fit into our menu, because we know that Iceland often does not have the best optimal weather conditions for cultivation of many vegetables for example.
The seasonal ingredients do not only apply to the restaurant’s menu, but also to the bar menu. It is important to us that both our restaurant and bar are intertwined in this matter so that our customers can have the best possible experience for their taste buds, whether it is food or drink.
By updating our menu throughout the year, we can better meet our customers cravings than before, and we get to introduce the culinary perspective for the Húsafell area with more local sourced produce.
That has also reduced the demand for produce that's out of season.
2. The Importance of our Locals
We love our environment and the people that surrounds us. We emphasize the use of local ingredients and sustainability to be able to serve high quality food with as little impact on the environment as possible.
Therefore, we try our best sourcing our ingredients and services from the local environment to strengthen the local economy, but also to reduce our shopping miles and minimising energy expenditure and emissions that contribute to climate change. Guess what? Less carbon footprint!
We also saw that we could do even better which led us to start our own cultivation of herbs and garnishes, that we use in both our restaurant and bar menu.
We don't just let it end there, we decorate the restaurant and the bar with garnish from our own cultivation and items from the beautiful environment that surrounds us. Moreover, we want to incorporate the beautiful external environment into our own environment and combine it with our business. That has provided us with excellent feedback from appreciative customers.
Many of our customers are eating less meat, specifically because they value sustainability and want to reduce their CO2 footprint. By offering more vegan and vegetarian options to our restaurant’s menu we are closer to sustainability. With this, we further accommodate those who want to eat respectfully and considering the environment.
We also have the way of thinking that we want to accommodate our customers and if there are any dietary requirements, we always work on solutions. Our kitchen is staffed by an excellent team who are not only educated culinary chefs but are also nutrition experts.
We try our best to incorporate sustainable practices in our kitchen by using all parts of the ingredients we are cooking with and leave no scraps behind. By maintaining zero-waste cooking we can cut down on the food that we most likely ended up throwing away.
By reducing single-use plastic we can further reduce our carbon footprint. It doesn't matter if it's the kitchen, the restaurant, or the bar. We have replaced all the single-use plastic and we aren’t going back!
We know that waste reduction and recycling will cut disposal costs, but the biggest economic benefits come from resource efficiency. By practicing recycling and waste prevention our restaurant reduces the number of harmful materials produced and reduces energy usage, therefore benefitting our environment.
By reusing material such as paper, glass, plastics, among other materials, our restaurant saves production and energy costs, and reduces the negative impacts that the extraction and processing of virgin materials has on the environment.
We are conscious of the electricity we are using. Here in Iceland, it is to our advantage that during the summertime it is bright 24 hours a day!
We are simply doing our best to ensure sustainable and green efforts!
To truly become an Eco-Friendly restaurant and keep that title, we are practicing sustainability in all aspects of our environment. It could also be said that is has become a kind of personal interest for those of us who work together, an interest of doing and seeing better solutions for the environment and our future.
The voice of our customer's matter and we always listen carefully. Many of our clients have travelled the world and experienced different cultures and have a story to tell. We like to take their stories and see them as ideas to make it better for the environment through our restaurant.
Being an Eco-Friendly restaurant is way more than just a current thing. It’s an urgent necessity for all restaurants to be able to satisfy the needs of their future generations of dining customers, by showing them that they're paying for more than just their recent order. We consider it important to continue our environmental contribution to fight the effects of climate change and global warming one meal at the time. So, by choosing our restaurant we invite you to help us and be a part of the solution and change the world one meal at time!
