Rob Relief
Case Western Reserve University - Weatherhead School of Management
Chris Laszlo
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TownHall Ohio City is American eatery described as an “Urban Café & Sophisticated Swill” that aims to promote health, wellness and balance. The Company does this by being able to accommodate any diet with a healthy meal from its innovative and completely Non-GMO menu. According to the General Manager, Ryan Hartzell, the restaurant prides itself on being the only place in the city “where five people with five completely different diets can all come, enjoy a meal and grab a beer in a really cool environment” (Hartzell, 2017). The company also frequently hosts events where doctors educate the community on the dangers of consuming GMO foods and how putting the right ingredients in your body can increase health.
TownHall continues to promote health, wellness, and balance by occasionally feeding the hungry at multiple annual events. TownHall feels strongly that it’s their duty to provide the less fortunate with healthy great-tasting meals as well. However, the company’s innovation wouldn’t exist without the procurement of non-GMO ingredients. TownHall procures their fruits and vegetables from national farmers while acquiring most of the meat from New Zealand.
According to Ryan Hartzell, TownHall is successful largely due to three factors: atmosphere, service, and food offerings. The restaurant is a casually chic restored warehouse with exposed brick walls and mod-metal tables that has become a cutting edge and trendy bar as well as family and vegan eatery. The restaurant’s key to innovation is its very diverse Non-GMO menu – offering items like rice bowls, salads, chicken, tacos, burgers, craft beer, cocktails, and smoothies. It doesn’t matter if the dish is meat, vegetarian or vegan, it’s all non-GMO! TownHall offers amazing customer services and Ryan says, “They’ll do whatever it takes to keep customers coming back”. TownHall is the only place in Cleveland where a customer with an extremely strict diet can come in with a group of friends, give their server a list of things they can and cannot eat, and – if none of the items on the menu met their criteria – the chef will customize a current menu item or design a completely new Non-GMO dish. This is TownHall’s way of supporting the United Nations sustainability goal of Responsible Consumption and Production, because the company is focused on providing consumers with healthy meals.
TownHall is the first restaurant in Cleveland with a completely Non-GMO menu. Before the restaurant could open its doors for the first day of business, TownHall had to source all their menu ingredients from farmers who refused to use chemicals and create genetically modified organisms. According to Ryan Hartzell, sourcing non-GMO ingredients was a hassle and it took six months to do so. TownHall sources most of their meat from New Zealand and mass majority of crops from nearby local farmers to ensure freshness. The operations team worked diligently to structure deals with New Zealand Suppliers that ensures that most products were Non-GMO. Based on data from the USDA, it’s extremely difficult to find non-GMO farmers because 85% of farmers produce GMO crops. Also, the world has a surplus of GMO crops. GMO crop fields could cover the US 1.5 trillion times. The restaurant is working on becoming fully organic but it’s extremely difficult to get there while managing operations and keeping food prices affordable.
The restaurant has produced and is serving their own completely organic coffee brand. TownHall plans to become completely organic and open a new restaurant in Columbus, OH. TownHall’s business model is using sustainability to flourish. TownHall generates revenue as a byproduct of their sustainability innovation, the Non-GMO menu. Without the non-GMO menu, TownHall would not be as popular and, thus for, would not generate as much revenue. TownHall’s innovative business concept is full-spectrum flourishing and scalable.
TownHall’s restaurant concept was discovered after its owner, Bobby George, started having health issues and decided to create a restaurant that provided healthy food options that not only he could eat but the whole city of Cleveland could enjoy as well. TownHall is a part of Corporate Management Group that has been run by Bobby George since 2006 and includes concepts such as: the nine location Harry Buffalo chain, Barley House, and Rebol on Public Square. “After performing an extensive amount of industry research, Bobby was confident that an innovative new restaurant with completely Non-GMO food menu would bring suburbanites, celebrities, and socialites to West 25th Street.” (Hartzell, 2017) Bobby knew that he could generate revenue by using healthy food options as a lure to get wealthy individuals to the restaurant. Bobby George wants to provide healthy food options to Cleveland while also generating a profit and creating brand recognition. Once Bobby created the TownHall’s atmosphere, through its strong brand recognition, more and more people were willing to eat a healthy meal from TownHall versus a meal filled with GMO’s from somewhere else. Bobby George decided to target this consumer demographic to create buzz, create more foot traffic, and better serve the health-conscious food market.
TownHall’s greatest impact is the reduction in GMO foods consumed in the Cleveland area. As the city’s first completely Non-GMO restaurant, TownHall was the only force to provide GMO free food on a night out. TownHall has managed to create an impressive business model that keeps customers coming back for healthier foods while generating a profit. The restaurant’s Non-GMO menu along with an amazing venue and service easily makes TownHall a leader within the Cleveland food community.
TownHall also embodies the sustainability goal of Responsible Consumption and Production by providing non-GMO food options, reducing health risks, and securing non-GMO ingredients from farmers who refuse to use chemical enhancements. Also, the restaurant recently hosted Informational Fireside Chat with Cleveland Clinic doctors who discussed the importance of clean eating and Non-GMO foods. This education is pivotal for the community in increasing healthier lifestyles. This displays how TownHall is forcing its consumers to be more conscious about what they eat and being responsible in procuring their food from safe places. TownHall is a restaurant that created a business model around providing healthier Non-GMO food options to maximize profits that expanded to company creating a shared value and business as a force for good leading to a full spectrum flourishing business purpose.
Running a restaurant is already difficult. Running a sustainable restaurant is extremely challenging. There are more business factors that need to be considered when operating a non-GMO restaurant. TownHall’s creation team had to think about factors such as “Will local consumer like the food?”. This takes a lot of industry research, consumer surveys, and a lot of luck to get the desired answer. The next big thing TownHall had to do was figure out how to source their food and the difficulty of that task has already been discussed. Next, ownership must focus on finding good help. To run a business with sustainability at the core of a business concept, you must find someone who is completely bought in to the business plan. The most important aspect to consider is keeping menu prices competitive with other competitors. This is extremely hard to do for any business that wants to provide an extremely high-quality product at an affordable price.
Long story short, TownHall has figured out a way to master these items. In addition to having first mover advantage and room for scale, TownHall has created a very large barrier around the business making it hard to replicate. Especially with all the competition in the Cleveland restaurant industry, it’s extremely costly to start an innovative restaurant concept and get it wrong. Cleveland has seen 14% restaurant closure last year due to the saturation and competition in the restaurant industry. A complete organic or non-GMO restaurant may seem like an easy feat but once you take a deep dive into the business model and risks involved in the venture, it’s easier to start a restaurant customers have all seen before.
TownHall’s initiative to have a completely non-GMO menu is directly supporting the targets for the United Nations sustainability goals of Good Health and Well Being. Providing sustainable food options forces Cleveland’s basketball stars and well off young professionals to eat foods that are free of GMO’s. GMO’s are terrible for you and farming industry and here’s why:
A GMO (genetically modified organism) is a plant, animal, microorganism or other organism whose genetic makeup has been modified in a laboratory using genetic engineering or transgenic technology. GMO’s create food groups that don’t occur in nature and reduce the amount of organically produced materials from small scale food producers and local farmers. According to the Institute for Responsible Technology, "Human studies show how genetically modified (GM) food can leave material behind inside us, possibly causing long-term problems. Genes inserted into GM soy, for example, can transfer into the DNA of bacteria living inside us, and that the toxic insecticide produced by GM corn was found in the blood of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses." (Antoniou, 2017)
GMO’s can cause:
1. Infertility - In a study on GM corn and fertility there was a "significant decrease in offspring over time and significantly lower litter weight in mice fed GM corn." (Burke, 2017)
2. Birth defects – Glyphosate is active ingredient in the herbicide RoundUP, used on genetically modified food. According to Andres Carrasco, head of the molecular Embryology Lab at the University of Buenos Aires glyphosate "is responsible for causing birth defects, infertility, sperm destruction, and cancer." (Carrasco 2016)
3. Cancer – There has been multiple studies linking GMO’s to cancer. The studies reported ingesting genetically modified corn increased the likelihood of developing tumors.
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Ryan Hartzell, General Manager
TownHall Ohio City is an American restaurant located in Cleveland, OH that has a completely Non-GMO Menu. TownHall’s food is sourced from farmers who don’t use any chemicals on their crops or animals. The root of their business innovation is the Non-GMO menu because it’s one of the only restaurants in Cleveland that offers it. The Company has made revenue a byproduct of their sustainable business model by bringing a health-conscious restaurant to Cleveland; a consumer base who’s been craving healthy foods.