8 Reasons Restaurants Should Go Organic
If you’re an established restauranteur or you hope to open your own eatery at some point, you probably have plenty of ideas about how you can distinguish your establishment from competing restaurants. Coming up with a unique color scheme, creating an eye-catching logo, and finding a prime location are some of the ways you can make your existing or future restaurant a true stand out.
While the tactics just mentioned can help make your restaurant impossible to confuse with other locations, there’s more you can do to make your eatery distinct. What else you can do? You can serve organic food, naturally.
Too many restaurant owners and managers think that going organic means they’ll need to limit their menus to salads and plant-based dishes exclusively. That’s simply not the case, however. Organic food encompasses more than just healthy fruits and vegetables. It also includes meat, poultry, fish, and products produced by animals like eggs, honey, and dairy.
Having an expansive array of foods available to you isn’t the only reason you may want your restaurant to make the switch to organic. There are additional reasons to go organic that are just as compelling as the variety of organic food you can use to prepare lip-smacking meals.
Demand for Organic Food is Growing
Research shows that consumer demand for organic food is growing. Whereas “organic” was a foreign term to many consumers not too long ago, a lot of people are now actively seeking out organic food in the grocery store and the restaurants they choose to visit.
Once a consumer converts to organic food, it’s rare that the person will settle for conventional food moving forward. With organic eaters being so committed to healthy eating, making the switch to organic food in your restaurant can increase the odds that your establishment will be successful in the short- and long-term.
Consumers Are Willing to Pay More for Organic
It’s not a secret that buying organic food in a given grocery store typically costs more than buying conventional alternatives. People who eat organic food usually don’t mind paying more for their organic groceries because they’re familiar with the benefits that come with eating organic food. Just like they don’t mind paying more for organic food at organic food places like local markets, consumers are normally willing to pay more for meals plated up at organic restaurants.
Organic Farming is Responsible Farming
By making the change to an organic menu, you can distinguish your restaurant from competing locations by advertising that your establishment supports responsible farming. Organic farming is different from conventional commercial farming in some key ways.
For starters, chemical pesticides aren’t used on organic farms. Animals raised on organic farms aren’t treated with hormones or fed animal byproducts. In addition, the livestock on organic farms are treated humanely and they enjoy access to the outdoors.
Compared to traditional farms, organic farms operate in a manner that’s simply more eco-friendly and responsible. Here are just a few examples of the environmental benefits that are the result of organic farming:
- Hardy soil that retains key nutrients and minimizes erosion issues
- Protected and conserved water supplies
- Reduced need for fossil fuels and less air pollution
- Healthier biodiversity
Healthier Menu Options
As a restauranteur, the notion of serving your guests plates full of chemicals, pesticides, hormones, or animal waste is probably incomprehensible to you. If you’re plating up food from conventional farms, that might be exactly what you’re doing.
For food to be certified organic, it must be free of all the things mentioned above along with additives, GMOs, hormones, and antibiotics. Because organic food doesn’t contain any of those literally distasteful things, it allows you to serve healthier dishes to your patrons.
Increased Appeal
Serving organic food will increase the appeal of your restaurant among diners who are committed to healthy eating. You can increase that appeal even more by doing some things that will complement your organic menu seamlessly.
Taking steps to conserve water and energy, using natural cleaning products, and decorating your eatery with recycled and repurposed items are some examples of the things that go hand-in-hand with an organic menu. By doing some of these things, you can market your restaurant as an eco-friendly establishment that shares the values of the consumers in the vicinity.
Organic Allows for Seasonal Menus
Organic eating often involves eating produce that’s in season and sourcing food locally. With this in mind, having an organic menu will typically mean that you’ll offer different menus throughout the year depending on what the current season yields in the form of fruits and vegetables.
While the thought of rotating your menu several times a year may cause you to cringe, you should look at it as an opportunity instead. When you look through our directory of organic food restaurants in Houston, TX, or another location, you’ll see that many of them change their menus several times a year in accordance with the changing availability of produce.
By adjusting your menu to fit the season, you’ll be able to showcase different dishes, cooking techniques, and ingredients. And it will prevent your menu from becoming as stale as last week’s bread.
Organic Supports the Local Economy
Organic restaurants usually get their ingredients from local sources, like nearby farms or farmer’s markets. When you buy food from local places, you’re actively supporting your community’s economy. By lending support to the local economy and other small businesses, you’re showing your commercial and residential neighbors how much you care about the community you share with them.
Organic Food Lowers the Risk of Contamination
When food has to be transported over a long distance, it increases the likelihood that it might become contaminated. You can keep the risk that food might get contaminated during transport to a minimum by buying organic food from local sources that are close to your restaurant.
Add Your Organic Eatery to Our Database
If you’ve already converted to an organic menu, we encourage you to contact Organic Restaurants so we can add your eatery to our extensive database. We look forward to making it a breeze for healthy eaters to find and frequent your organic restaurant!