Programs to promote eco-friendly practices and diversity say a lot about a restaurant company’s willingness to make a difference. But what is one to think if a company jettisons one for the other? Among the explanations offered for why attendance at the Multi-cultural Foodservice & Hospitality Alliance’s annual conference last month was comparatively low is that the tough economy may be putting some operators in the awkward position of choosing green over diversity.
The theory goes that green is the flavor of the month, the current feel-good movement that’s also perceived as hipper and having a more far-reaching impact. Meanwhile, the theory says, diversity programs have become old-hat and are viewed with complacency.
If the theory is true, how can the agendas of two laudable movements that put the restaurant industry in such a positive light work against each other?
“I think green is the new ‘in’ thing,” a prominent industry consultant, whose clients are both vendors and operators, told me confidentially at the show.
Bouncing the idea around with others, I realized that she might be onto something.
Given that human resources is often the first function to be whacked in corporate downsizing and that diversity is often a subset of human resources—a practice most diversity experts condemn—it’s no wonder that diversity programs would suffer.
Working in the green movement’s favor is that so many eco-friendly programs cut costs, have a far-reaching halo effect and are relatively easy to delegate. From local purchasing to building units with environmentally friendly materials to composting, foodservice leaders simply need to send an edict to the appropriate department heads to implement such initiatives.
There’s also no shortage of pressure to embrace green practices, with alarming, doom-and-gloom bestsellers such as “The End of Food,” “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and “The End of Oil” crowding shelves.
Diversity is not quite as simple. It deals with hiring practices and career advancement, vendor relationships and ad placement with minority media. Someone has to be hired to monitor and measure diversity-related advances.
Either a black man or a man in his 70s will make history in November as the first president of this nation from his respective demographic base. Closer to home, eight companies in this year’s NRN Top 200 survey—most prominently McDonald’s USA, Darden Restaurants and DineEquity—were led by powerful executives representing racial minorities and women. There were no such leaders in the NRN census when the MFHA was founded 11 years ago.
Clearly, progress is being made, but diversity and going green are “permanent movements” that must be encoded in the industry’s DNA.
Failure to support either is simply failure.