A new cafe culture is brewing in the San Francisco area, where a growing number of coffee houses are banishing paper to-go cups and replacing them with everything from glass jars to rental mugs and bring-your-own cup policies.
What started as a small trend among neighborhood cafes to reduce waste is gaining support from some big names in the city’s food and coffee world.
Celebrated chef Dominique Crenn, owner of the three-star Michelin restaurant Atelier Crenn, is opening a San Francisco cafe next year that would have no to-go bags or disposable coffee cups, and would use no plastic.
Customers who plan to sip and go at Boutique Crenn would be encouraged to bring their own coffee cups, spokeswoman Kate Bittman said.
On a bigger scale, the Blue Bottle coffeehouse chain, which goes through about 15,000 to-go cups a month at its 70 US locations, said that it wants to “show our guests and the world that we can eliminate disposable cups.”
Blue Bottle is starting small with plans next year to stop using paper cups at two of its San Francisco area branches, as part of a pledge to go “zero waste” by the end of the year.
Coffee to-go customers would have to bring their own mug or pay a deposit for a reusable cup, which they could keep or return for a refund. The deposit fee would likely be between US$3 and US$5, the company said.
Blue Bottle’s pilot program would help guide the company on how to expand the idea nationwide, CEO Bryan Meehan said in a statement.
“We expect to lose some business,” he said. “We know some of our guests won’t like it — and we’re prepared for that.”
Larger coffee and fast-food chains around the US are feeling a sense of urgency to be more environmentally friendly and are no doubt watching, said Bridget Croke of New York-based recycling investment firm Closed Loop Partners, which is working with Starbucks and McDonald’s to develop an eco-friendly alternative to the disposable coffee cup.
Today’s conventional paper cups for hot drinks are not made solely from paper, Croke said, adding that they also have plastic linings that prevent leakage, but make them hard to recycle.
It is unlikely that large national chains would banish disposable cups in the immediate term, or persuade all customers to bring mugs, so they are looking for other solutions, she said.
Starbucks and McDonald’s chipped in US$10 million to a partnership with Closed Loop to develop the “single-use cup of the future” that is recyclable and compostable.
“They know there are business risks to not solving these problems and the cup is the tip of the spear for them,” Croke said, adding that Blue Bottle’s choice of San Francisco for its test run is clearly the right market.
Starbucks, which has more than 15,000 US cafes and about 16,000 internationally, plans to test newly designed recyclable cups in five cities next year: San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Vancouver and London, spokeswoman Noelle Novoa said.
Small-cafe owner Kedar Korde is optimistic that one day it will become trendy for coffee drinkers to carry around reusable mugs, just like stainless steel water bottles have become a must-have accessory in the San Francisco area.
Korde’s Perch Cafe in Oakland ditched paper and plastic cups in September, along with lids and straws.
“We now offer a glass jar that comes in a 12 ounce [350 milliliter] or 16 ounce [470 milliliter] size,” Korde said.
Customers put down a US$0.50 deposit and can return it for a refund, or keep it and get US$0.25 off future drinks. The cafe also sells US$0.50 reusable sleeves for the jars.
Korde said that he has been surprised by how quickly customers have adapted.
He was inspired to make the change after his nine-year-old daughter’s school did a cleanup project at Lake Merritt, across from his cafe, and found its disposable cups in the water.
His daughter joked that she should not have to clean her room if he could not keep his stuff out of the lake, but he took it more seriously.
“We’re a small coffee shop,” Korde said. “We’re not going to save the world, but at least our cups are no longer winding up in the lake.”
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