Innovation

Lil has a few ways that she is innovating, both in her personal life and in her business. In her personal life she has been carbon farming at her little hobby farm located just outside Halifax. Carbon farming is a method used to sequester carbon from the atmosphere into the soil and roots of plants to help in their growth. This is an important method in aiding the climate change initiative as it helps to take the excess carbon that is in the atmosphere out which has been harming the planet. Lil also uses solar panels at her farm, which has helped her to become more independent from the electricity grid and is also a more sustainable way to get electricity. Lil uses regenerative farming practices at her home and tries to find as many local farms that do the same to use as suppliers for the Wooden Monkey. Regenerative farming is essentially a method of farming that enhances the resources it uses, not depletes them. It encompasses everything from water management, to fertilizer use, to ensuring the health of the soil that produce is grown in. Another way that Lil has led the way in innovation through the Wooden Monkey is by enhancing the refrigeration to be more efficient and working with Efficiency Nova Scotia to make sure that they are being as efficient with their energy consumption as possible. By teaming up with Efficiency NS they are working on becoming the most sustainable that they can be while running businesses in both the downtown Halifax and downtown Dartmouth areas. Lil’s whole mindset about how food is grown and produced and how she can personally be sustainable and make the Wooden Monkey as sustainable as possible are innovations in themselves. She believes that reverting back to 50+ years ago is what needs to happen as things were more sustainable then and were also healthier and more ‘real’ food was grown and eaten than is being consumed now.

Saving Water and Energy

Inspiration

When Lil was in elementary school, she became frightened when she learned about acid rain. When asking her teacher what we can do to stop it, her teacher replied; nothing. This is when Lil first realized that there are issues that need to be addressed and that if no one else is addressing them; she must. Later in her life when Hurricane Juan hit, she sat in a dark room for nine days. She wondered how her province can be cut off from the rest of the world just like that. This inspired her to become an activist, and ultimately, deciding to start The Wooden Monkey. However, when financial burdens became unbearable due to the high cost of the ingredients and sustainable resources she was using, she questioned whether or not her business would be able to survive. One night, Lil decided to address every potential negative result of the failure of her business. Her family's financial security, inability to succeed, and any personal outcomes of her failure. She cried all night, and in the morning, she realized one thing; She was not going to stop. This meant that she had no reason to think of the possible outcomes, as she was not going to give up. Moreover, she understood that doubt is the only thing standing in between her and her success. Shortly after, Lil realized that her business would succeed. She noticed that many of her customers were not only young but were sick. Celiac, IBS, gluten issues, gut issues, and even cancer, were the reason that many people were looking to come to The Wooden Monkey. They were looking for real and organic food, and this was something that they were not able to get virtually anywhere else. From this day forward, she has never looked back.

Overall impact

Lil has an overall impact as much in her business as in her personal life. In her personal life, she has taken on the burden of education about sustainable practices and teaching others about it through her involvement with the Green Party of Canada. She has changed the way that she lives so that it is more sustainable and is doing her part in helping to reverse climate change by implementing regenerative farming and carbon sequestration at her hobby farm. She has also converted her main electricity provider to be the solar panels that she has on her farm. She believes that organic food is just real food that has none of the preservatives or extras added to it that most food does today. In her business, she has a huge impact on what people are seeing as being sustainable and what healthy, locally sourced and produced foods can look like. She believes that all food that the restaurant serves should be from sustainable practices and she makes sure that all of the ingredients that are brought into the restaurant meet her criteria and expectations on being healthy and from as many local places as possible. Lil also has had a huge impact on the consumption of water at the restaurant through her initiative of only bringing water to patrons who ask for it. This is helping to save many liters of clean water from being dumped down the drain. Overall, Lil has a small but mighty impact through her personal life and being as sustainable as possible and through the vision and execution of the Wooden Monkey and their commitments to being a sustainable and locally sourced restaurant.

Business benefit

Sourcing locally has had many great benefits for Wooden Monkey. They have provided their business with a different opportunity for growth. They can see the growth patterns for the products they are sourcing which accommodates their market. By locally sourcing Wooden Monkey can have their products delivered faster and have more reactive actions from their suppliers. It is easier for them to manage their shipments because it is all in a close radius as opposed to globally. Wooden Monkey has less of a chance of miscommunication because there are more opportunities for face-to-face communication with other businesses and suppliers. It is beneficial overall because sourcing locally is cheaper, and not only does it save them money, but it ultimately makes them gain more profit. It attracts more customers to the buyer of the local products and to the local businesses that are supplying. The supply chain logistics of sourcing locally has allowed the restaurant to put all their trust in the local suppliers. This is because sourcing locally allows them to buy from multiple sources and they must ensure that their products meet the quality control standard as well as food safety. If they were to have a health or product safety issue with anything being locally sourced, they can immediately trace it back to the supplier that provided those products. This is a positive benefit for restaurants because they can easily fix the problem at hand by only having to go back to one step to locate the supplier of said product.

“By using locally grown organic produce, we not only ensure the quality of the food we serve is so far as this is possible, but we provide material support for the local farmers who share our commitments to human health and the environment (Wooden Monkey, 2021).”

The Wooden Monkey has provided a benefit in environmental awareness. Sourcing locally has allowed the business to mitigate the company's impact on the environment. By sourcing sustainable agriculture, they can ensure their food products are coming from farms that reduce their input of external energy and are aware of the environmental regulations that have been an issue over the past few years. This is an important benefit for Wooden Monkey because research from The National Marketing Institute (NMI) has found that consumers are 58% more likely to purchase their products from a company that is aware of its environmental impact. It also demonstrated that the average consumer is willing to spend up to 20% more on products and services that are environmentally friendly. They can price their food for the quality of sourcing locally and still attract optimal amounts of consumers, all based on the fact that more people are looking for new ways of eating sustainable and healthy foods. The Wooden Monkey is focused on providing environmentally friendly, locally scoured products. This became their main goal when creating their businesses because they are adamant about knowing where their food came from and how they should be providing others with the benefit of that information.

Social and environmental benefit

One of the biggest ways Wooden Monkey strives to help the environment is their rules with water distribution. One thing that Lil likes to point out is that one cup of water actually equals three cups once cleaning, sanitizing, and filling the cup with ice is brought into the equation, not to mention all the water that gets dumped (MacPherson). As a result, the Wooden Monkey tries to save as much water as possible by not serving anyone water unless they specifically ask for it. As for the food they serve, Lil stands by the notion that organic food isn’t anything special, it’s just food the way it was meant to be grown and harvested. She believes that products from establishments such as McDonalds can be considered ‘treats,’ but we cannot treat it like food.

But it goes deeper than food, as Lil is very concerned about the environment as a whole. Her environmentalist mindset originated very young when she was learning about acid rain in school. The thought of acid falling from the sky frightened her so much, and upon asking what they could do to prevent it, her teacher told her that there was nothing they could do. The whole backstory of the Wooden Monkey came from her fear while living through Hurricane Juan, as she spent nine days sitting in a dark room while waiting for it to pass. Natural disasters occur thanks in part to poor environmental factors, they need a spark. Because of this, Lil is trying to create a counter spark to combat the factors which create those natural disasters. But until then, she also strives to prepare the province in case another Hurricane Juan-esque event occurs but making sure that the province has enough food to be able to sustain themselves for long-term cut-offs from the rest of the world.

MacPherson, Lil. "New Twist! Now Offering Water by Request Only."

Interviews

Lil Macpherson, Founder and Co-owner

Christine Bower, Ms.