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<\/p>\nThe unglamorous work of dumping buckets of egg shells, coffee grounds and all manner of kitchen scraps into an industrial composter is now a daily practice at Dallas\u2019 Restaurant Beatrice, and so is tracking the greenhouse gas emissions of every single purchase and process.<\/p>\n
Since the small Oak Cliff restaurant opened in 2022, its mission has been to be as sustainable in its operations as possible, and it recently took a rare step in that pursuit. <\/p>\n
To fully understand and improve its climate impact, Restaurant Beatrice completed a comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions audit \u2014 an exercise typically conducted by large corporations in places where it is required of them such as California and the European Union. <\/p>\n
The audit that analyzed 2024 numbers required months of tediously gathering data, weighing trash, tallying used rubber gloves and documenting every resource that goes into running the B Corp-certified restaurant, said Hanh Ho, a partner in Restaurant Beatrice who spearheaded the effort along with executive chef Michelle Carpenter. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn the beginning, it was grueling and demoralizing,\u201d Ho said. \u201cThere was not a lot of data when we started doing this, and it was really hard to get going because there are not a lot of restaurants that do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
A greenhouse gas audit, which can range in cost from free to thousands of dollars depending on business size and need, is intended to serve as a baseline with which to measure progress in emissions reduction. What Ho and Carpenter said they discovered from their audit is that their restaurant is already doing many things right, but there\u2019s room for improvement.<\/p>\n
Michelle Carpenter, executive chef and owner of Restaurant Beatrice, adds food scraps and organic waste to the Oklin composting machine at Restaurant Beatrice in Dallas on Monday, Aug. 25, 2025. <\/p>\n
Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
Since opening the restaurant, Carpenter has sourced local ingredients as much as possible, focused on whole-animal utilization and implemented low-waste food practices. She\u2019s now analyzing the carbon intensity of ingredients on the menu like chicken, scaling back on items like rubber gloves, working to install solar panels and expanding composting efforts with the recent installation of a commercial composting machine.<\/p>\n
Running a sustainable and climate-conscious restaurant is often solitary work, especially in Texas, Ho and Carpenter said. It\u2019s common to see restaurants tout meat from local ranches, herbs grown in patio gardens or vegetable scraps saved to make stock, but restaurants taking a full-scale approach to sustainability are few and far between. Ho said they haven\u2019t come across any other restaurant in Texas that has completed a greenhouse gas audit.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(From left) Kimberly High, owner of Joppy Momma\u2019s Farm, and Michelle Carpenter, executive chef and owner of Restaurant Beatrice, load up buckets of compost from the restaurant into High\u2019s car after exchanging it for fresh vegetables from the farm.<\/p>\n
Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
The CEO of the Florida-based software company Ho and Carpenter used to conduct their greenhouse gas accounting, North Star Carbon and Impact, said Restaurant Beatrice is the first independent restaurant they have worked with. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou see large corporate chains do this because they might be publicly traded or have asset managers who own part of the companies,\u201d said North Star CEO Josh Prigge. \u201cTo see a single restaurant that is independently owned do this is definitely rare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prigge, who previously worked in the wine industry, said purchased goods and services, known as Scope 3 emissions, tend to be the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions for food and beverage companies. Restaurant Beatrice\u2019s audit revealed 70% of its emissions fall into Scope 3. <\/p>\n
\u201cBuying local is probably the greatest opportunity for restaurants [to reduce emissions],\u201d he said, \u201cspecifically buying from other local, independently owned food producers. It\u2019s about cutting out that transportation used to ship in ingredients from a place like South America or some other state.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Carpenter\u2019s hope that their efforts will yield an easier path to sustainability for other restaurants in Texas, she said. <\/p>\n
She and Ho have been in on-and-off conversations with the city of Dallas for several years to try to come up with a composting program for restaurants in the city. Composting, Carpenter said, is an impactful way for food businesses to move toward more environmentally responsible practices, and having a municipal program would make it easier to get more restaurants on board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sustainability in the Restaurant Industry The unglamorous work of dumping buckets of egg shells, coffee grounds and all manner of kitchen scraps into an industrial composter is now a daily practice at Dallas\u2019 Restaurant Beatrice, and so is tracking the greenhouse gas emissions of every single purchase and process. Since the small Oak Cliff restaurant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":12961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dining"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com\/resizer\/v2\/4KDGCR2YY5FBRAC67WGN35M35M.jpg?auth=aa5c79c1673b5ac158658321759a6de661bc275aecee1fbfd74bc05f6d60c693&quality=80&width=1200&height=630&smart=true","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12962,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12959\/revisions\/12962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}