Michael Oshman is the Founder and CEO of the Green Restaurant Association (GRA), a national nonprofit organization created to shift the restaurant industry toward ecological sustainability. He has been featured in Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and hundreds of other local and national media outlets. Through the GRA’s notable press coverage, Michael has been a keynote speaker and guest lecturer at conferences in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Asia.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- What is the Green Restaurant Association’s mission?
- Michael Oshman explains how to become a certified green restaurant
- The benefits of environmental sustainability in the restaurant industry
- Green Restaurant Association’s certification system
- Michael’s inspiration for founding the Green Restaurant Association
In this episode…
In today’s episode of the SpotOn Series, Chad Franzen talks with Michael Oshman, Founder and CEO of Green Restaurant Association, about how eateries can implement ecological practices. Michael shares the Green Restaurant Association’s mission, how to become a certified green restaurant, and the benefits of sustainability in the food service industry. Stay tuned!
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25 Media. We featured top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world
Chad Franzen 0:20
Chad Franzen here co host for this show where we feature top restaurant tours, investors and business leaders. This is part of our SpotOn Series. SpotOn has the best in class payment platform for retail and they have a flagship solution called SpotOn Restaurant, where they combine marketing software and payments all in one. They’ve served everyone from larger chains like Dairy Queen and subway to small mom and pop restaurants. To learn more, go to spoton.com This episode is brought to you by Rise25. We help b2b businesses to get ROI clients referrals and strategic partnerships through done for you podcast. If you have a b2b business and want to build great relationships with clients, referral partners and thought leaders in your space, there’s no better way to do it than through podcasts and content marketing. To learn more, go to rise25media.com or email us at support@rise25 media.com Michael Osman is the founder and CEO of the Green Restaurant Association, a national nonprofit organization formed in 1990 to create environmental sustainability in the restaurant industry. for over 30 years he has been the most vocal person on the planet regarding shifting the restaurant industry towards environmental sustainability. Michael has been featured in hundreds of media stories, including Time Magazine, NBC Nightly News, NPR, CNN, Fox News, ABC, The New York Times, and many others. Michael, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you? My pleasure? I’m doing well. Thank God and you. Good. Great. Thank you so much. Hey, so tell me a little bit more about the Green Restaurant Industry has been around for 30 years? What is its primary purpose? And how did it come about?
Michael Oshman 1:49
The Green Restaurant Association was founded in 1990. So it’s actually probably 31 years now. And I found it when I was college students second year of college many years ago. And the mission was exactly what it is today, which is to shift the restaurant industry towards more environmental sustainability. And seven categories of energy water waste, disposables, chemicals, food and building, we have a whole certification program, where restaurants can become a level one and two Star Three Star Four Star certified green restaurant, and we help them make the actual changes. So they don’t have to become experts in sustainable seafood, or sustainable food vegan, vegetarian, this cleaning chemical energy efficiency, we bring it all to the tables and nonprofit of what is best for your restaurant, not the restaurant next door, not your restaurant two years ago, now your restaurants we get a baseline of what they’re doing. We then make a strategy of what they can be doing based on how high they want to go. And then we’ll work with their recyclers, their landlords, their cleaning chemicals, their disposables, vendors, and then once they had that higher level, we get the verification to demonstrate they’re actually made those changes. And then they become certified. And they can communicate it to the 79% of consumers who prefer dining and sort of vegan restaurants or the 78% of employees who prefer working in a place that matches their values.
Chad Franzen 3:19
We’ll get into more a little bit, a little bit more on that in just a minute. But you’ve met with the President’s Council on Environmental Quality under President Clinton and met with the EPA director under President Obama, how did those meetings go? And what were those about?
Michael Oshman 3:32
It was pretty cool. What about him? I was much younger than under President Clinton. It was a while ago, though. Well, one was more recently, I think was 2015. And, and they they contacted us through a mutual group and wanted to meet at a restaurant to kind of demonstrate some programs that we’re doing. So we actually had the meeting at one of our certified green restaurants in Boston. And we hosted the director of the EPA, there along with eight or nine other community leaders as small table people, maybe 10 people. It’s pretty fun. We got them to where we got her to wear our certified green restaurant. Pin. We took her on a tour around the certified Green Restaurant showing her exactly what it means we made specialized signage was wonderful, very human, very approachable. You know, you could tell that she’s somebody who actually cares about this issue wasn’t just a political appointee, but somebody who actually cared and at the time, they were working on some legislation around this. So for me, it was really fun to have the ear of the director of the EPA, and also have a view. You know, environmental change happens in many different ways. It can happen through big sweeping legislation, but I think we all know, you know, this is nothing against legislation, but we all know that The winds of politics changes from left to right to middle. And things get done sometimes need to get done. And the nice thing about when business does it, they’re doing because they chosen to do it every single certified green restaurant by choice. Now, they might feel the consumer pressure, they might feel employee pressure, they might feel the legislative pressure of all these things that are banned. But it’s still choice, nobody’s forcing them to do it. And because they’ve chosen it, it’s therefore a decision they think is good for the business. So the next thing is, regardless of who’s president and Governor mayor, they’re owning this is how they want their business to be going forward. So that’s kind of what we’ve been about is it’s not to say legislation is not important. But we get businesses and consumers wanting to do us seeing this in their best interest, then it’s a much easier game to win than then depending upon what the political winds are.
Chad Franzen 6:05
So how do you become a certified green restaurant?
Michael Oshman 6:10
So generally, restaurants will contact us, we’ve got restaurants, anywhere from like JFK International Airport, terminal four to Harvard’s, in northeastern of the world, we’ve done MetLife Stadium, Super Bowls, we Congress. And any restaurant, famous restaurants, small mom and pop franchisees and big brands, they contact us, for some reason, they either care about the issue, they either are realizing it’s really good to attract and retain employees, especially now, I’m sure you know, there’s a pretty big crisis in the industry in terms of getting employees always, it’s never easy. It’s always a big turnover, but especially now. But if you can have a competitive advantage, from an employee perspective, consumers have to do something that’s compelling them to call us now. And they sign up and they commit anywhere from a year to five years. And if all is good, then that gets renewed, we have clients that metaphor for decades. But there’s a contract where they’re actually committing to becoming a certified green restaurant, we promise them a level of service to have our professional sustainable consulting team and our marketing team support them. In making the changes, it’s that 800 Number. Everybody knows recycling is good composting is good. organics better than pesticides. We’re not like giving them a flyer. You know, it’s like, you know, Chad, you want to go on a diet, great, eat less exercise, more, less cholesterol, less this wonderful. I’m a genius that just forget to be healthy. But who doesn’t know that, you know, what stops us from making changes individually, but also as businesses is much more complex than just being told what to do. So we don’t sit there and preach and tell them what to do. We do give them information on what to do. But we also I think part of why we’re here 31 years later, is we know how to get over those hurdles of change. Change is hard. Even psychologically it’s hard. It’s usually not so hard practically. When we look in retrospect like that’s all I needed to do. But there’s we’re complex human beings. And so we take that pain if the pain is I don’t know what to do. I know Styrofoam, biodegradable, oxygen, we know everybody’s telling me things are green, I don’t know who to believe, Oh, we got this nonprofit, the green restaurants decision, they’re not selling us anything. They don’t care if it’s this product or that product. They’re agnostic in that way, what their loyalty is to what’s best. So there’s that trust issue. There’s the knowledge is issue. There’s the question a pain point of how far do I go? Do I have to be a vegan, organic solar powered restaurant before I started marketing myself as a good restaurant and Green Restaurant. If you don’t have any standards, or guidance or certification levels, then it’s hard to know how high you need to go. Or conversely, somebody might think oh, recycling, the greatest restaurant in the world, but they’re not. So by having standards that are objective, the individual standards, but the overall levels, it really makes it easier for them so that when they’re marketing themselves, they’re not tooting their own horn. We are tooting their horn. And if we get a cynical consumer or somebody saying, Well, how can you be green when you’re only doing this we’ll say we’ve got our you know, we have a restaurant in on the West Coast. That is our greenest restaurant. There’s solar powered, they’re vegan, they’re fantastic. They really like pretty close to what everybody should be doing at least academically to lower their environment impact. And they’re still doing about a sixth of what’s possible. So we really communicate to the restaurants, set it up in perfect red take where you are, to what you can actually do, we’re not telling you to knock down your walls, we’re not telling a steakhouse to become, you know, a salad place, we’re going to be taking your concept and making it the greenest that it can be. So we do an environment assessment, where’s your baseline, we work with the vendors for step strategy. We then help you implement it, we then verify it, the restaurant that gets certified the PR and marketing kick in where on dinegreen.com, our websites and various other places, including decals, menus, the marketing kicks in them. So recertification education process that continues urine in Europe.
Chad Franzen 10:57
What do you say to people who think it would be too costly to try and become green certified?
Michael Oshman 11:03
That’s my favorite question. I have to tell you the stock answer for that is my answer is what I tell them. It’s too costly not to go green. How so? And I don’t and I don’t just mean, from some global perspective, yes, we all know that it’s constantly environmentally, most people, you know, realize that more air pollution, asthma isn’t a good thing more reliance on oil isn’t a good thing. Conservation and greener energy is a better thing. Most people get that, you know, if you have a restaurant employee, take this green chemical that’s going to clean the table, or this one over here that will also play the table but stinks and is dangerous. Which one? Do you want to use 20 year old employee, I think I’ll use the one that isn’t potentially dangerous. For me. These things are pretty objective when you deep politicize them. So yes, that is all true. But I’m not even talking about on that level, what I’m talking about is on $1 and cents level, that’s the restaurant that is saving more energy means their energy bills lower the restaurant that saving more water means the water bills lower the restaurant that is recycling composting and sending that same amount of garbage with the same truck and the same guy driving the truck. But sending it to a composting place recycled paper in the landfill, that economic model is more sustainable, and therefore, the waste bills go down. The restaurants doing all of those things are going to be operating in a financially more cost effective way. So one opportunity to save money to do you know how expensive it is to train those employees that care. So you might not be able to pay your employee 90 bucks an hour, you probably can’t. But it becomes a very cheap investment demonstrate that you care about an 18 year old, 20 year old 22 year old 25 year old employee, because now you’re composting? Well, pretty likely a lot of people that demographic are going to be happy about that. You’re recycling, you got rid of your styrofoam, your energy efficiency, water efficiency, you’re not putting you’re on board, they’re walking into work and seeing that certified green restaurant, they did that staff training with the green breast Association consultant last week, and they’re now jazzed up because the restaurant cross street isn’t doing this. And the other places they’ve worked aren’t doing this, but you’re doing this and you feel proud that you’re part of that restaurant, consumers are seeing that that CNN thing or the NPR thing or the local newspaper thing. So you just got to 1000s of dollars of free media, everybody else is scrambling because your city three months from now is passing a Styrofoam ban or a straws upon request mandate. But you did it a year ago. And you were the glue guy. Now nobody’s the good guy, everybody’s forced to do it, there are going to be stories about it, because now it’s normal. So when you take all of that some of which is easy to financially quantify, like energy and water and waste, and some it’s harder because of the cost of training and retention, their their real costs, but they’re harder to quantify. But the story becomes really clear to most businesses, that this is something they need to do in doing standards certification, and the benefit that comes with that. And expertise is something that it’s more costly to be behind a ball rather than to demonstrate leadership.
Chad Franzen 14:34
So you kind of talked about this a little bit earlier that your green score, what is your green, what is your green score tell you and you know, is there something you could do to take it from a three to a five or something like that? Pretty quick.
Michael Oshman 14:47
We have four different levels. We have level one, two star, three star and four star four star we’ve got about 5% of our restaurants there so those are like, you know, that’s your like 14 year old kid that goes to Harvard graduates in two years, like, you know, they exist, but that’s not what most restaurants are gonna do. That’s four star. For most restaurants, it’s not achievable. Three stars, believe it or not, the majority of our restaurants are three stars, the majority, more than two stars, four stars and level one why? Because a lot of our restaurants started at three star, but many of them started at level one, but we have restaurants for many years, and they build up to that. And because four star is such a jump, they then hang out in the three star area for a long time. So three stars is very achievable. Level one is a place where we can take, you know, almost any fast food chain that you could think of that you normally would not think of as a Green Restaurant, we can go in there, help them make certain changes and get level one. So that’s really our certification level that can help the mass of the industry. And then they can move to two star and three star. So just as an example, the four star ones are more likely to have solar began or some sort of big steps, or it could just be a lot of small energy steps that they’ve done. Or maybe they contacted us before they built their building, or before they did a renovation. So they’re getting points for sustainable for sustainable paint. For things that you can’t do. With a business that’s not doing renovation, we’re not gonna tell them to scrape their paint off. So there literally are opportunities that are only available for renovations and new builds. So that’s your four star, three star, it two star and three star going to have a much more well rounded group of steps and energy, water waste, disposables, chemicals and food, that’s two and three stars, it’s gonna be dispersed around there, level one, you might have restaurants making changes in three or four categories, so might be more top heavy, in three or four and not as dispersed. So really, really ranges quite a bit, but some of the steps are LED lighting, very accessible. aerators switching out of $3 eraider is like pig saves 1000s of dollars. It’s really like restaurant industry can save millions, hundreds of millions of dollars doing almost zero investment steps aerators spray belts, led an easy step for most restaurants, is adding a couple menus low on the food chain. You know, if I say have you heard of Impossible Burger, have you heard of Beyond Meat? These are the brands, you know, Burger King has the Impossible Burger 10 years ago, if you said Burger King is going to have a vegan burger, you know, somebody would have looked at me and said, okay, good luck, though this guy’s really idealistic. But now we see that this is penetrating the mainstream, because these things taste good. And there’s enough vegans and vegetarians and people who are wanting to eat heart healthy, who aren’t vegetarians or vegans, but they want to go and have a burger. And this tastes good enough. So adding a couple menu items that are low on the food chain vegan is it’s easy. There’s no financial investment that actually attracts more customers. You know, we’ve had a steakhouse who said to me, years ago, like a very mainstream well known steakhouse said to me, I was speaking to the owner. And, and and, in that conversation, this person said, you know, I don’t think we’re gonna go vegan, I said, you know, we’re not trying to convince you to go vegan. But we might try to help you have a couple organic steak items we might work with you to have, the steak eater who wants to come to your place might have a spouse who’s vegan or vegetarian doesn’t or doesn’t like steak, or has heart issues, don’t you want them to come to your restaurant, if you only have steak, you’ve lost out, they’re not going there, they go into the other steak place or burger place where the one spouse can get the salad and one could get the steak. So by having some real menu items, not just samples, but a real menu item that somebody wants to go to attract more customers. So even just adding a couple vegan vegetarian menu items is something that gets a lot of points in our system. Because the environmental impact of something low on the food chain is much more beneficial
Chad Franzen 19:30
from kind of a generic customer standpoint, you know, just somebody who is Friday night or whatever and wants to go out to eat, why it was why would it be a benefit to go? I mean, beyond kind of, you know, in the back of your mind knowing it’s a green certified restaurant, and that’s good for the planet. But why would that be a good experience for me, as I just said, kind of a general person.
Michael Oshman 19:50
Absolutely. So Chad, what I would say to you is almost the same question almost the same answer as you know, the concern of isn’t it more costly to go green? And I switch it around saying no, it’s more costly not to go green. So kind of a similar answer there. Which is, why would somebody go to a certified green restaurant? My answers white wouldn’t be, because Chad if I could tell you, let’s say you like pizza, and you live in New York, and I can tell you there’s five different, pretty good pizza places within a three minute walk. And there probably are, wherever you live in New York, in Manhattan, okay, fine. So you’re gonna go to this place, or that place, or this place, maybe you like this place a little more, because they’re all pretty good. And you spread out your business. If I could say to you, hey Chad, you know, one of them just became a certified green restaurant, you can now have that pizza that you like. And they’re putting out less water pollution, less air pollution, it’s better for your community. There, you know, if you if you are one of the many Americans who cares about environment issues and climate change, you’re doing nothing, you’re not spending $18, you’re not spending $50, you’re not spending $100 donating to Sierra Club, we’re not asking you to sell your car, you’re going out for pizza, you’re making no sacrifice, all you’re doing is choosing a certified green restaurant. And by doing that, you’re literally having a lower impact. Because the likelihood that their napkin, their paper towels, or toilet paper, their toilet, their sink, their spray Bell, their lighting, the cleaning chemicals where your stuff is going not to the landfill, but recycling composting and the likelihood that the negative impact of what you’re doing is getting much less the positive effects much greater. So if I can tell you, Chad, go have that pizza, spend the same exact money, enjoy the meal, and see that decal on the front feel actually a little good, you did just serve your belly and have a good time you actually did something good. Most consumers gonna be like, Wow, I spent the same money. I enjoy my meal. And without making a donation, I actually did something good for the world. Most people are going to be more likely to go back to that place.
Chad Franzen 22:13
You talked about the negative effects that COVID has had on the restaurant industry. Has it affected your association at all?
Michael Oshman 22:21
Oh, my gosh, yes. You know, anybody in the restaurant industry? I cannot? I don’t know. I don’t know what part of the restaurant industry wouldn’t answer that way. There might be an exception somewhere. But yes, it’s this industry has been ravaged, ravaged, ravaged, you know, the amount of restaurants closed permanently. The restaurants that are closed, but they’re just hanging on, you know, the back and forth. And this isn’t a criticism on government policy. It’s just, it’s just difficult. It’s difficult for restaurants, I understand why the policies exist. So different from state to state, city to city. But the practical effect is very difficult. It’s been very difficult on and off. And having said that, the first year of the pandemic, plus or minus been a little bit of a blur, plus or minus, we we did a lot of internal projects to strengthen our organization, and really make our systems more efficient, because most restaurants didn’t want to speak with us. Thank you over the past year, things have picked up the past six months has, I would say hasn’t used the word normal. But our consulting team is right now back to normal in terms of servicing clients full time. So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. But it’s it’s been a challenge. But thankfully, we’ve weathered it. And the nice thing is I think the industry and consumers and the world sees that. Sustainable is not a trend. I’ve been saying that for years. It’s not a diet fad. It’s not a diet fad that’s going to be replaced with the next type fat. It is something that is all too real. And the issues are becoming bigger, not smaller. The amount of people that are buying into and becoming interested in are more the younger generations getting older and becoming decision makers. And so all the statistics demonstrate that this is far from a trend and all the more so, you know you have the whole foods of the world you have the Tesla’s of the world. We have all the electric car companies and mainstream car companies, you’ve got the vegan meat companies, you’ve got some you’ve had billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of an industry that’s called Green Business Industry when I started this 31 years ago, like barely millions if that so anybody really loves the business objectively, including socially responsible investing See, this is going nowhere. And the only thing to do is really to jump on and to figure out what level people want to go to.
Chad Franzen 25:09
What drove you to start this? 31 years ago? You said you were a college student? You were you’re working in a restaurant at the time, or what? What made you decide to do this? And did you? And second part? Did you ever think that you would 30 years later, you’d still be doing that would be your job? Um,
Michael Oshman 25:25
I’ll start with the second question of did I think it’d be three years later, I remember sitting at a not an alcohol bar, but like a was like a diner. It was like a breakfast place. And they had like the, you know, the stools where you sit up and the owner was behind there in that little kitchen area. And this was in San Diego, where it started the organization. And I remember him saying, it’s a nice guy. He really wanted to do this. But he saw this, like, I don’t know, I was I started with 19. But we got our first restaurants on board, maybe when I was 21. And legitimately he looked at me, he’s like, how do I know you’re gonna be here in six months or a year, I mean, come up, it was funny was like, this could have been just an exciting idea. The next year, I would have been in law school or whatever, he legitimately questioned, this is a risky investment, because this guy is so young. And I said to him, I said you don’t. But if you knew me, then you would know that I will be here. But there’s nothing I can say, to demonstrate that, except that my personality level commitment is that if I’m doing this, then I’m going to follow through on it. So did I think at that point of the 31 year, so I was thinking like, a year or two or three, I could assure you. But when I started an idea and started to be a year, or two or three, I started this organization, to fundamentally shift the world in the same way that cars need to shift over electric and energy needs to shift over solar, the restaurant industry needs to integrate all of those and become more sustainable. The restaurant industry, it could have been anything, you know, it could have been, you know, electric cars, it could have been solar, could have been organic agriculture. I picked this industry because it includes energy, water waste, it’s it’s a wonderful leverage point to really change business on a large perspective, in versus a car company. And I used to say this in interviews at the time, of what why am I not lobbying GM? Why am I not doing this? Because they wouldn’t listen to me at the time. And I wasn’t an engineer like Elon Musk, who was about to go create my own car, or actually, other people created the car became a little bit later. But what I knew was that this industry was highly dependent on consumers. And that goes to your to your first question, which is, you know, the reason the reason why I did this, the reason why I created this organization is that consumers have a lot of influence in the restaurant industry. Even in McDonald’s franchisee has only a certain amount of consumers. And in for that one particular franchisee, any restaurant is completely dependent upon its X amount of customers that come in. And therefore, from a voting bloc, you don’t need a lot of consumers, communicating their interests to influence businesses, you don’t need a lot of employees. It’s not a behemoth of an industry. It is a huge industry, it’s huge amount of employees, I think it’s 10% of the workforce, something like that, you know, anywhere from four to 10% of the economic impact of the economy. It’s huge on many levels. But it’s made up of a million small pieces, there’s a million or so restaurants in the US. So that’s that was a big reason why I chose the restaurant industry. I wasn’t running a restaurant a time a little bit. A couple years later, I ran ran a restaurant. But I really came from the consumer perspective, I really loved going out to eat. It was it was already aware of the environment issues at the time, and already made my own changes around the packaging, I was going to use and frustrated by my own impact. And I really thought in order for change to happen, there needs to be a systemic easy way for it to happen. It can’t just be individuals making individual choices. It has to be that also, but they’ve couldn’t have you can’t have individuals making choices that they don’t know what choice to make. What restaurant should they go to, which I don’t know which Apple is organic or not, which Apple should I buy? You know what, unless there’s certifications guiding you as to what the better decision is, then you have to be a PhD consumer in nine different fields and that’s not fair to the consumer. So when you go into a restaurant, there should be an easy way for you to make the choice. And that’s why we chose the restaurant industry is influenced by the consumer. And it leverages many environmental issues.
Chad Franzen 30:10
How long did it take you to kind of build up to where you had, you know, where you hit where you were, you were dealing with a number of clients or a number of restaurants, and helping them out, you know, especially, it’s somebody that that young
Michael Oshman 30:22
took a while to go, a crazy amount of persistence and patience. Because we didn’t get seed funding, you know, when we went for funding in the beginning, funding in the nonprofit sector was generally geared towards lobbying for legislation, or education, we didn’t fit in now we fit in a lot more, thankfully, the nonprofit world has shifted, but at the time, there, there were few to no other organizations doing what we’re doing, which is when we’ve got to fundraise, like, No, we don’t want to educate people on recycling, we actually want to go in and help people recycle, because we think the facts on the ground and actually making real change will pull much stronger level levers on our capitalist system, than just giving a bunch of education when people actually not having the tools to do it. So at the time, we didn’t get the funding. So thankfully, we were bootstrap our organization, and we built up slowly, and there’s really a lot of benefits that we have very dispersed funding, we’re funded by our restaurants. So it’s very dispersed, we have a stable, diverse, therefore, when you have a pandemic, or 2008 recession, we’ve got, you know, lots of legs to walk on and, and we were able to weather weather, the storm. So it, it took many years, you know, wasn’t until 2006 16 years into our organization, that Al Gore put out his movie called the inconvenient truth, which is a, I would say, a watershed of a moment in the United States where a lot of people were in the mainstream, who really weren’t looking at environmental issues, saw the movie, and woke up that means to have it didn’t actually know what to do. Because, you know, wasn’t a fully prescriptive movie, but made a case that a lot of thinking people thought, wow, this is maybe society, we need to do something. So we started getting calls from a lot of mainstream restaurants at the time, there was a shift at that time. 2006 was like, definitely a demonstrable shift from small organization saying the same thing over and over again to oh, now a lot of the industry thinks they should do it. Who are they coming to that organization that’s been doing this? There was a small point in the industry where some actors in the industry thought that they can just do it illegitimately. We’ll put on our own sticker, we’ll say, We’re green. Well, you know, and then people realize this term greenwashing, it doesn’t really work. Because consumers really want something real. Just like when you go into the market, if you’re gonna buy something vegan, you want to know it’s vegan. If you’re gonna buy something organic, you want an answer again, now, the guy at the store told you it was not the guy at the store told you thinks there’s no meat ever eggs and that veggie burger you want to know. And so industry really woke up to there’s no, there’s no line your way out of this, you got to do this. And that’s really what the past 15 years has been about as the industry’s been coming on board, I would say faster than the previous 15 years. Not fast enough. But we’re definitely I would say, going from a place where we used to need to convince restaurants, that this was an important thing to spending much less time doing that. And instead, we go right to action and strategy. So that’s that’s really gratifying. Having said that, it’ll be gratifying when these issues are dealt with. And the idea of recycling and composting is not a novelty, the idea of having clean energy and conservation is so much further along. And the nice thing is the graph was like this and started going like this, we’re for those who can’t, or an audio, it’s getting a steeper incline in terms of the adoption.
Chad Franzen 34:28
I can tell you know, it’s been 31 years here, you’re still incredibly passionate about like you just don’t like you just started it yesterday. What keeps you going like that?
Michael Oshman 34:37
That’s, I would say a couple of things, one, just on a personal level. And I speak to students and speak to people that say interested in this but just pursuing their passions. And one of the things that I encourage people to do is to make sure that they’re taking care of themselves because if you want to make change, you better be in it for the long haul. You know Not a movie, it doesn’t end in an hour and a half change in life, whether it’s personal, whether it’s organizational, takes time it takes commitment takes perseverance, there’s ups and there’s downs. So what the one thing of why I’m so passionate 31 years later is because they don’t resent doing this. I feel very grateful that I get to do something that that I’m passionate about, and that I’ve seen the impact I’ve seen. Wow, a Super Bowl. Wow, cool. Okay, great. Congress, well, Harbor, oh, American Express, this is great things are getting adopted that famous restaurant that famous restaurant, this city government. You know, we just, we just got our first thing with the utility who is mandating in their area, certain restaurants become certified your utility is sorry, not mandating, they’re getting funds for a certain amount of restaurants going certified, they’re going to pay for a certain amount of the restaurant, that’s never happened before. So they’re part of it is I see things moving, you know, be very difficult if there was no move, but I’ve seen movement. That’s that’s one thing. And the other piece is I have, I think a very really realistic ideas. As idealistic as I am. As idealistic as I was. I’m very pragmatic. And to make change, if you look at any movement, the civil rights movement, the movement for women to get a vote, you know, we have those moments that we see in the movies of that speech, you know, Martin Luther King, Jr, speech is what we remember. And he did phenomenal work, but there were people before him, and people after him. And not everything is a fantastic speech, a lot of hard work by people individually, movements take decades, sometimes a century or so. So I hope it doesn’t take a century for this. But I had a realistic view that this is going to take a long time. And it’s really gratifying to see, you know, electric vehicles in my lifetime. And the next few years are likely to flip in terms of being the exception to the mainstream. I’ve seen it with solar. So it’s really also gratifying to see that this vision is being adopted, the world is changing in this way. So it’s it’s very exciting.
Chad Franzen 37:31
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. One more question for you. But first, how can people find out more about the Green Restaurant Association?
Michael Oshman 37:39
The best way is to go to our website, dinegreen.com, dinegreen.com. That’s the website for the Green Restaurant Association they are and they can find certified green restaurants through a search through their state through certification levels. If they’re a restaurant, they can find out how to get help from us. If they’re student in the culinary school, they can find educational resources or employee accreditation system. So it’s a great website to become educated by. And we encourage all the consumers out there spending about half their food budget dining out, if not exclusively, using this when they’re dining out to use it as a guide that if they want to go for Chinese food that night, and there is one in that area they want to go to we encourage them to use this as a guide.
Chad Franzen 38:30
My final question, what are some books or podcasts that you have found particularly valuable or enjoyable?
Michael Oshman 38:38
It’s interesting. When I started this, there weren’t MBAs there weren’t you know, there were books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring that were kind of large call to actions. So what I relied on a lot more where people live people search for inspiration and a great inspiration of a friend of mine, Joel Trachtenberg, who’s still on our board, who really woke me up to these environmental issues. When I was just a teen. There was a somebody who ran for mayor in San Diego with an environmental issues. He makes me look like a Johnny come lately. He was doing this 2030 years before me and he really spoke the language of green business not pulling on people’s heartstrings, but demonstrating that this makes sense. And when we get to the cost per kilowatt of solar that this is going to happen he spoke dollars and cents and energy. So that’s really what I’ve tried to fill myself with is inspiring people who don’t just inspire my heart but really helped me have a language to make this happen. I read a lot mostly articles, etc. or organization does a lot of research in these issues. But what I have to say ad, which is probably counterintuitive to your listeners and viewers is when there comes a new study, demonstrating that this is even worse than we thought. I’ll read a little bit of that article. But I probably won’t read the whole thing. Why? As bad is convinced as you’re gonna get, I don’t need more bad news. If you have an article about a dishwasher that’s more energy efficient, or some great system and entrepreneur came up with how to have the convenience of disposables, but with reusable, I’m going to read that whole article. And quickly I’m going to talk to the owners of those companies. I’m going to see how we can integrate them and get them into the restaurant industry. But that’s also an important thing that you asked me about the longevity is you’ve got to balance hearing the bad news with the good news. Because if you read too much information, and please don’t take this, as Michael Oshman said, Don’t read, you know, read, get educated. Just choose what you’re getting educated by balancing balance your education and things that are solutions based, and also know yourself of how much you can take, because human beings are emotional beings. And if we read bad news all day, bad scientific reports and things are worse and worse and worse. Is that going to get you to act more if it is read it. But if you only read half that information is enough for you to feel the sting, then we have that information and spend your other half actually doing action. So that’s my little advice of how much to take it.
Chad Franzen 41:40
Okay. Hey, it’s been so great to talk to you, Michael. I really, really appreciate your time. And we will encourage everybody to go to your website. dinegreen.com. Thank you so much.
Michael Oshman 41:51
My pleasure. Thank you, Chad.
Chad Franzen 41:53
soling everybody.
Outro 41:54
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