This is the fourth article in a five-part series about restaurants and climate-change solutions, produced in collaboration with Eater.
Rifrullo Café, a cozy farm-to-table restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts, hums with customers on a steamy July mid-morning. Patrons sip coffee on the shady sidewalk patio. Inside, people hunch over laptops or chat with friends, waiting for Turkish poached eggs with harissa-spiced eggplant or cinnamon custard French toast.
Rifrullo’s rustic-modern décor, mismatched dishware, and chalkboard sign welcoming guests to “be yourself, make friends, find harmony, and relax,” are as inviting as its prices, which top out at $16 for the salmon burger. Chef-owner Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky opened the restaurant in 2013 after working for renowned Boston chef Lydia Shire and at various East Coast restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern in New York City.
“Community, environment. It’s part of my DNA . . . As a chef, I have a responsibility to do my best to create good environments for people, customers, and the community,” says Marnell-Suhanosky.
As part of creating that good environment, she’s taken multiple steps to cut Rifrullo’s carbon footprint, including composting all food scraps, one of the most important steps restaurants can take to combat climate change. When food waste goes to landfills, it creates methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Food waste from all sources is responsible for eight percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the U.S. produces the equivalent annual emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants.
But restaurants have other, less visible sources of waste that also contribute to climate change. These include energy (used for cooking, refrigeration, heating, and cooling), water, and packaging. Food service buildings in the U.S., including restaurants, annually use a total of 365 trillion BTUs of electricity (still generated mainly from fossil fuels) and gas. That’s equal to the carbon emissions of about 110,611 gasoline-powered cars (using the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas calculator).
They also use 15 percent of the water consumed by commercial buildings in the U.S., and that use is tightly linked to energy consumption. Inefficient dishwashers, for example, waste both energy and water. Moreover, restaurants and food services use nearly 1 trillion pieces of disposable food service ware and packaging annually, according to a report from Upstream, an agency that advocates for the reuse industry.
Kitchens as Energy Hogs
Commercial kitchens use anywhere from two to 10 times more energy per square foot than other commercial businesses, Richard Young, the director of Frontier Energy, a national energy consulting firm, told Civil Eats.
Heating and cooling, refrigeration, and cooking equipment are the biggest energy users, followed by lighting. There’s no rule of thumb for how much energy a certain type of restaurant might use, Young said. “Two burger restaurants that look the same can have really different energy use depending on how they cook the burgers.” A chain-style charbroiler, for instance, can use up to four times more energy than a griddle. Location also matters: A restaurant in a hot climate like Texas will use more air conditioning than a restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky, chef and owner at Rifrullo Café in Boston. (Photo credit: Meg Wilcox)
Rifrullo Café’s Marnell-Suhanosky switched from gas to energy-saving electric induction ovens four years ago and very recently installed an induction cooktop. The kitchen is now fully electric.
Induction ovens and cooktops produce, on average, about half the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of gas cookers, though that figure varies according to how clean the source of electricity is.
“It’s just been a game changer,” she said. “It’s much cleaner. We could not expel the fumes that would come off the gas stove and the filth that it creates.”
Induction ovens and cooktops produce on average about half the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of gas cookers, though that figure varies according to how clean the source of electricity is, Young said. An induction oven powered entirely by renewable energy, for example, would produce zero GHG emissions. Induction ovens are safer to use because there is no open flame. They’re also easier to clean and don’t produce radiant heat, which keeps kitchens cooler. But they can cost three to four times more than gas units. Plus, many cooks prefer cooking with gas for its precise and rapid heat control and the ability to blister certain foods, like chiles, directly in the flame.
The California Restaurant Association, in fact, joined forces with a state gas utility, SoCalGas, to recently beat back a 2019 Berkeley ordinance banning natural gas in all new buildings, even though the rule wouldn’t have affected existing restaurants. The association argued that its members favored gas cooking, and that the ordinance would limit their options when opening new locations.
Lafayette Public House, in Lafayette, California, has largely switched to induction cooking. (Photo courtesy of Lafayette Public House)
Not all California restaurateurs agree.
“We’re very open to induction. It’s a great tool for our overall success,” said Emily Lyall, operations manager at the Lafayette Public House, a coffee, bar, and kitchen. Lyall purchased two induction ovens for her California restaurant. Though the restaurant still uses one gas range, Lyall said they run it just two to three times a week and designed their menus to do without it.
Advocates worry that the same forces that took down the California gas ordinance are setting their sights on Massachusetts, where Brookline and nine other communities have banned gas appliances in new buildings, as has New York State and more than 100 cities and counties across the country.
