Innovation

Bravo Restaurants Inc. is a multi-generational, family-run business with several restaurants in the Chicago area: Gino's East, Eduardo’s Enoteca, Ed Debevics, and Gotham Bagels. Bravo takes pride in the excellent quality of its food, caring for its customers, and focusing on a mission to help sustain the planet through various environmental practices.

Bravo's environmental practices include the elimination of all plastics and replacing them with compostable items within all of its restaurants. Other environmental activities focus on increased understanding and use of recycling directives. The scope of Bravo's sustainability practices reaches out to the community where its restaurants are located through support and partnering with humanitarian organizations. These include:

• Alliance For The Great Lakes (to protect the natural waters of the Great Lakes)
• One Warm Coat (provide coat drives to provide free warm coats to people in need)
• The Greater Chicago Food Depository (donating a portion of proceeds and employee volunteers to combat food disparity)
• Other Ongoing Humanitarian Efforts such as We Stand with Ukraine (donating a portion of total restaurant sales to charitable organizations)

The business seeks to meet various sustainable development goals through the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals including Zero Hunger (Goal #2), Gender Equality (Goal #5), Clean Water and Sanitation (Goal #6), Decent Work and Economic Growth (Goal #8), and Responsible Consumption and Production (Goal #12).

Inspiration

A recent interview with Dan Murphy, Director of Financial Operations at Bravo, revealed the inspiration for the steps Bravo has taken towards sustainability. These steps were triggered by an event in 2015. “There wasn’t a lot of awareness about sustainability at Bravo at the time" according to Dan Murphy. "However, that same year, Bravo Restaurants opened a brewery inside Ginos East, one of their restaurants.”

Dan Murphy told us that the leadership became concerned when they realized how much water the restaurant was using in their brewing process. “At that point, the company became mindful of not only how much water they were using, but also how they were using resources overall. At that point, Bravo Restaurants joined the Alliance For The Great Lakes. The company wanted to bring awareness to people and to ensure the conservation efforts to protect the natural water of the Great Lakes.

Through company donations, hosting fundraising events, and encouraging customer donations for the Alliance, Bravo helped to raise awareness and promote conservation efforts to protect the natural waters of the Great Lakes.

Overall impact

Building sustainability goals presented some challenges at first. One issue was how to bring awareness to the staff and customers of new sustainability practices. People get comfortable with the old ways of doing things. However, eventually, the changes were welcomed.

Business benefit

The changes in operations caused economic challenges for the business. For example, switching from Styrofoam to paper boxes or biodegradable flatware affected the costs at the start of the innovation. In the beginning, regular vendors did not carry these items and so the company had to go to a third-party supplier where these items were considerably more expensive. Today, almost everybody stocks these items; and though the prices have come down, they are still a little more expensive than plastic.

Bravo has benefited by taking the time to educate employees. The company is proud to have created a culture within the employee community at Bravo that values efforts to protect the planet. Management is always open to receiving any suggestions from employees to keep the team on target.

Social and environmental benefit

Striving to achieve sustainability goals not only benefits Bravo Restaurants, but also local communities, society, and the environment. The corporation has achieved a more positive image and productive outcome. They have reduced their carbon footprint, reduced waste, and implemented better technical know-how, and environmental conservation. In addition, Bravo is proof that ongoing insight, acceptance, and action of sustainable development goals can provide benefits to all.

Interview

Daniel Murphy, Director of Financial Operations