Restaurant group goes ‘green’

GOING GREEN: By donating used frying oil to the soon-to-open Newport Diesel, The Mooring Seafood Kitchen & Bar saves $125 per week that it once spent on waste management. /
GOING GREEN: By donating used frying oil to the soon-to-open Newport Diesel, The Mooring Seafood Kitchen & Bar saves $125 per week that it once spent on waste management. /

If being “green” or environmentally responsible were a war that restaurants were preparing to wage, Newport Restaurant Group would be making plans for both frontal assaults and flanking actions.
The company’s “green team” was formed four months ago as the brainchild of Paul O’Reilly, CEO of the Newport Harbor Corp., the employee-owned parent company of Newport Restaurant Group, which, in turn, runs six restaurants – four in Newport, one in Tiverton and one in Providence.
“The cool thing we found out about this is as soon as we started doing it, the employees were so on board,” said Shawn Westhoven, general manager of The Mooring Seafood Kitchen & Bar in Newport and chairman of the green committee. “We had so many more ideas than we could ever deal with … It was overwhelming at first.”
So the 10 committee members, including one from each department in the company, decided to tackle the little things first.
For example, The Mooring already had a recycling program that encouraged employees to separate glass, plastic and cardboard from regular trash as part of their daily shift duties. So it became a natural extension to help the other restaurants implement the program.
In the past few months, The Mooring has noted a 25-percent decrease in the amount of waste it generates for trash pickup, Westhoven said.
The next step was installing compact fluorescent bulbs in all the areas that did not use a dimming switch. The bulbs use 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs. And they last 10 times longer while saving about $30 in electricity for the life of the bulb.
NRG also is installing motion sensor light switches in the bathrooms, storerooms, offices and back hallways of its restaurants.
“That was the first thing because it was easy,” he said. “We could do it immediately.”
The hope is that measures such as these will help offset the 2.5-percent increase in energy costs associated with the company’s purchase of wind energy credits this year, Westhoven said.
NRG plans to purchase 2,400 megawatt hours of wind energy, which amounts to all the energy needs of the six restaurants and the Castle Hill Inn & Resort for the whole year.
In addition, most NRG restaurants donate used frying oil to Newport Biodiesel, a startup company that recently finished building a new 6,000-square-foot processing facility in Newport and expects to start fully operating next month.
Nat Harris, production manager for Newport Biodiesel, said NRG restaurants were the very first to sign on.
“They are very proactive,” he said. “We’re finding the restaurants are very receptive to what we’re doing with their used vegetable oil.”
The oil will be turned into biodiesel that can be used to operate yachts and farming equipment and heat homes. The company collects on average about 25 gallons per restaurant per week, Harris said.
It saves the restaurants $125 per week that was being spent to have a waste management company pick it up and destroy it, Westhoven said.
“It’s such a no-brainer, you kind of wonder why anyone wouldn’t do it,” he added.
NRG also is looking into how it can cut costs by conserving water at the restaurants. It hired Jamestown-based WaterWise Technologies to audit water usage at The Moorings and calculate how much water and money the restaurant could save by installing highly efficient, low-flow pre-rinse spray valves in its dishwashers and waterless urinals in the men’s bathroom.
“The equipment has to be changed,” Westhoven said. “We’re hoping to break even on that.”
But Steve Mecca, owner and president of WaterWise Technologies, said the company should recoup the extra cost in the matter of a couple months to a couple years.
He said in most cases, the new equipment isn’t much more expensive than standard equipment, though some can be as much as 10 to 25 percent more expensive.
Mecca started the water efficiency consulting company last year. Since then he has consulted for three restaurants, including The Mooring, plus a YMCA, one school and a few universities in the Boston area.
“I would say restaurants tend to be pretty easy targets because they are heavy users of hot water,” Mecca said. “I haven’t had a problem getting restaurants to take a look” at his services.
NRG is expanding the “green” battlefield by incorporating a carpooling incentive that gives employees free downtown parking if four or more of them commute together.
It is an effective incentive because “normally they would have to park a mile outside downtown Newport and hike in or pay $20 a day,” Westhoven said. To help coordinate the carpools, the company has a blog on its Web site where employees can compare schedules.
The next step is designing new restaurants with materials that have a low impact on the environment, he added.
For example, NRG is looking into reclaimed timber for floors and into building solar power into restaurant design. It is also looking into light and window placement to maximize thermal retention.
“We’re a growing company,” he said. “We’re going to be opening several new restaurants in the next few years.”
Asked if he thinks NRG is at the forefront of efforts being made by restaurants to be more “green,” Westhoven said: “I get the feeling that a lot of people are starting to do it. … I wouldn’t say we’re ahead of anyone else. We’re just really organized.”

No posts to display