Innovation

This idea blossomed into Boon Burger Café, a 100% vegan restaurant that offers fan favorites such as cheeseburgers, chili cheese fries, and soft serve in a healthy and sustainable manner without the use of animal products, tailored to both vegans and meat eaters. The first location opened in the summer of 2010 in Winnipeg, and they have now expanded to five locations, with more expansion planned for the near future.

Boon Burger Café was built around a shared passion for creating a business that not only turns a profit but also makes an effort to improve the world. Boon Burger is continuously working to eliminate as much waste as possible and function sustainably. They offer healthier alternatives to popular foods and make all their meals fresh in-house, achieving both responsible consumption and production as well as good health and well-being. Boon Burger has also eliminated garbage and plastic waste from all their locations. They have future plans to expand their role in the food production side of their business with efforts to provide jobs for at-risk teens and ex-criminals, as well as opening more restaurant locations across the country. This will provide decent work and economic growth, while also helping to create sustainable communities and cities.

This innovation ties heavily to Tomas’ personal morals and beliefs around sustainable food and protecting the environment as a whole. “At Boon we strive for excellence in food quality, food consistency, and taste. We believe that every meal we serve eliminates needless animal suffering. Our food is better for the environment as well as our health.”

Inspiration

Tomas and his wife owned and operated a non-vegan restaurant prior to the opening of Boon Burger. After numerous questions from customers asking about how the meat was raised and where it was sourced from, Tomas began to do research of his own. This research gave Tomas more dead ends than answers and snowballed into further research into animal- versus plant-based diets and the benefits of each. This led him to re-evaluate his lifestyle with the end result of becoming vegan. “It’s good for me, it’s good for the planet, it’s good for the animals, it’s good for everybody.”

The goal of Boon Burger is much more than just generating a profit. The opportunity to make a positive impact on the world and to leave a legacy of sustainability is far more important to the business. “We would like to set the bar for future establishments to realize that it IS possible to run a great business that reduces the footprint on the planet.” Boon Burger promotes the benefits of a vegan lifestyle and strives to show that vegan food is not only healthy but also delicious.

Overall impact

There’s a growing trend in business for companies to do more than just generate money. Creating a business that is socially responsible provides an opportunity to benefit both the owner of the business as well as the overall world. This belief is at the forefront of Boon Burger Café’s ideology. The innovation of being a 100% vegan restaurant has shaped Boon Burger as a company. It plays a large role in the decision-making process of the company and helps shape the company as it continues to grow.

This commitment to building an environmentally friendly and socially responsible company has both short-term and long-term effects and impacts on the company itself as well as society. Boon Burger shows every day that you can make small steps that will prove to make a big impact. They continue the conversation about the benefits of a plant-based diet and how it can benefit not only the person eating it but also the society around it, all while tasting great. They aim to open people’s minds and have them think about food and business in a socially responsible way. This is not a change that will happen overnight, but when companies like Boon Burger talk about the importance of protecting the environment and show people that they can help, they keep the conversation going and move the general population's mindset toward a more environmentally friendly tomorrow. The impact that Boon Burger and others are making is shown in the increased desire and demand of customers to be part of businesses that are socially responsible.

Business benefit

Boon Burger has maintained success by creating an environment that consumers and employees want to be a part of. Through promoting the environmental and nutritional benefits of its food, Boon Burger leaves workers and customers feeling happy to be part of the movement toward a more sustainable business model. This has been shown to be true with the growth Boon Burger is experiencing. They started with just one operational location and are now up to five, with a new location set to open in Oakville in March 2018. They have plans to continue to expand across Ontario and the rest of Canada, as well as implementing new programs to source sustainable and locally grown ingredients. Boon Burger continues to show that a business can succeed while holding the concept of being socially responsible central. “As long as we remain profitable, we will put as much as possible into sustainability.”

Social and environmental benefit

Boon Burger Café’s impact on society and the environment is clear. Non-animal-based products require much less of a drain on the environment. It takes less water to source their ingredients and produces drastically less pollution than their animal counterparts in its creation. Boon Burger also makes efforts in their restaurants to further lower their environmental footprint. Through efforts such as having compost and recycling rather than garbage bins and serving drinks in glasses with compostable straws rather than plastic, they do their part toward sustainability every day.

Boon Burger doesn’t want to stop there, though. They continue to look for ways to further decrease their environmental impact. Plans have been considered to implement vegetable greenhouses made of recycled storage containers that run off solar power and rainwater to grow ingredients locally. This will also create jobs and open opportunities for groups such as at-risk teens or ex-convicts to work for a sustainable company like Boon Burger.

Interviews

Tomas Sohlberg, Founder of Boon Burger Café

Tomas Sohlberg, Founder of Boon Burger Café