Chicago Botanic Garden
Café Renovation
The goals of a nearly $4 million Garden Café renovation are to improve visitor flow, make food choices more visible to diners, increase capacity for the food service provider (currently
Sodexo) to serve both the Café and private events, add features for more environmentally responsible practices in the Café, and increase earned income. We aim to create an enjoyable and educational experience in the Café, consistent with the overall Garden experience. It is estimated that 50% of Garden visitors stop at the Garden Café. At other comparable institutions that number is approximately 30%.
The current Café has served the Garden since 1993, when attendance was much lower than it is today and when standards and expectations for environmentally sustainable practices in public institutions (i.e., recycling) were minimal. The Visitor Experience and Business
Development section of the Garden’s strategic plan states:
The Garden will make notable advancements toward making its visitor operations a model for being as waste- and emissions-free as possible and will serve as a leading educational resource by conducting programs that visitors can participate in, learn from, and model at home to live more environmentally conscious lives… This will build the Garden’s effectiveness at generating loyalty, driving attendance, increasing earned and raised income, and motivating the public to protect nature.
The proposed Café renovation is critical to meeting this strategic plan goal.
In 2011, the Garden embarked on construction in the Café. This first phase of work—for which the project cost is $900,000—will allow us to expand the dishwashing and storage area allowing the Café to move from using disposable plates, bowls, and flatware to using
“permanent-ware” (excluding cups due to lack of storage space). Also in 2011, the Garden will incorporate composting food scraps and compostable materials (i.e., cold-drink cups) into its Café operations. Changes in Illinois law that took effect on January 1, 2010 made it possible for food scraps and other compostables to be collected like regular waste by refuse haulers.
Our goal is to become a leader in sustainability for not only museum and botanic garden cafés, but to become a model for dining establishments in general. As we do with other
Garden programs, we will teach visitors about what we are doing, and how individuals can apply sustainable kitchen practices at the Garden and at home. In 2008 we stopped selling bottled water and in 2009 we eliminated straws and lids for cold drinks (reducing excess plastic and waste). We use locally sourced food where possible, including grass-fed beef burgers, cheese from local sources, and fresh produce from the Garden’s Green Youth
Farms and Windy City Harvest programs, and communicate these practices to visitors.
After the 2011 back-of-the-house improvements are made, a commercial refuse hauler will be able to pick up the Garden’s food scraps and other organic and compostable waste (e.g., paper napkins) and take it to a composting facility. Ultimately, it is our goal to create a
“closed-loop” solution, whereby the Garden will then use the compost from this off-site facility on the Garden’s grounds or at the Garden’s Green Youth Farms and Windy City
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Harvest sites. The improvements will cut down on the amount of garbage sent to landfills, create rich compost, and give us an opportunity to educate visitors about food waste composting.
In addition to the 2011 back-of-the-house changes, as soon as funding is available, the
Garden hopes to complete a second, more extensive Café renovation to complete front-ofthe-house improvements, including a food-court style arrangement with stations and cashier islands for better customer flow. This second phase of construction is expected to better serve customers and generate more earned income for the Garden’s operating budget (we receive a percentage of sales from the food service provider). The second phase will include making whole-scale front-of-house renovations, including moving a major mechanical room to the basement, building food-court style stations, and making other important functional and aesthetic improvements. While this future Café renovation will not increase seating, it will increase efficiency and ability to handle more transactions because visitors can flow through the Café more quickly, and the customer lines will not back up into the Visitor
Center as they do now. After renovation, customers will be able to see the available food options and feel more comfortable in the space. The current configuration creates a dark, intimidating, and confusing bottleneck, which in turn creates one long line with no end in sight. This discourages visitors from entering the space. Faced with this unappealing situation, many people opt not to eat in the Café. In addition, the current kitchen and storage facilities are too small to support both the Café and the special events responsibilities of the current Café manager, Sodexo.
Our planned improvements will create an operationally efficient, enjoyable, educational, and revenue-producing food service program at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
February 3, 2011
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