Schlafly Bottleworks Joins Green Dining Alliance

With 2,000 restaurants in St. Louis—dozens in Maplewood alone—diners have the luxury of choosing restaurants that reflect their values, especially if their values include sustainability and environmentalism.

A new program called the Green Dining Alliance partners green advocates with restaurants to reduce environmental impact. The first restaurant to receive a Green Dining Alliance is , which earned a four-star overall ranking, the highest possible score.

“We’re really excited to be launching it,” said Cassandra Hage, executive director at St. Louis Earth Day, the group that founded the alliance. “We have our staff members devoted to it now. It seems like there is a lot of interest in the community.”

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While Schlafly Bottleworks is the first restaurant to be officially audited and ranked by the Green Dining Alliance, Hage said her group is also working with the Mud House on Cherokee Street, Schlafly Tap Room, Sassafras Café in the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Local Harvest in Tower Grove and Pi Restaurants.

It’s no wonder both of Schlafly’s St. Louis storefronts are up for certification. Schlafly employs a full-time sustainability manager, and the restaurants are already doing most of what the program promotes: reducing, recycling and composting restaurant waste and sourcing sustainable food, to-go ware and cleaning supplies.

For smaller restaurants that can’t afford to dedicate their staff to sustainability, the Green Day Alliance will evaluate the restaurant’s practices and provide goals and strategies for going green.

“We want to make it really easy for them,” Hage said. “We really want to keep pushing everyone to keep the momentum going.”

Earth Day’s ultimate goal is to set up Green Dining Districts, or areas with several certified restaurants nearby, and to give diners easy access to their scores via a phone application. The group is in talks with .

Diners who want their local eatery to go green can print up a card to leave behind at restaurants describing the Green Dining Alliance and encouraging them to join the program.

“Your customers are changing—we hope you will change, too!” the card reads.

Hage called the card campaign a “grassroots” marketing effort for the brand-new program.

“We really want to use people’s interest in getting their favorite restaurant to go green as well,” she said.