Green restaurant Xia Mi: 80% of ingredients organic and eco-friendly, six years of struggle turn losses into profits

The nearly 6-year-old Xia Mi plant-based restaurant uses 80-90% organic and eco-friendly ingredients, with domestic ingredients reaching 95%. In June of this year, it was ranked first by the UK Sustainable Restaurant Association, making it a model green restaurant in the country. However, because of the high cost of ingredients, it operated at a loss for six years straight. The operator, after painful reflection, reviewed the ingredient loss rate, developed new menus and services, and through multiple measures finally turned a profit this year. How can costs be reduced without shortchanging farmers, employees and consumers? Let's look at Xia Mi's approach to business.

From investor to operator, introducing corporate management methods

Located near Taipei 228 Memorial Park, Xia Mi plant-based restaurant has been open since November 2013. The restaurant uses organic and eco-friendly ingredients, and its seasonings include non-GMO traditionally brewed soy sauce, as well as fair trade pepper, curry powder and other spices, with no chemical additives. Apart from a small amount of olive oil and pasta from abroad, everything else supports domestic crops through contract farming.

Current CEO Wang Shuzhen was once a medical technologist and has extensive management experience. Originally one of the investors in Xia Mi plant-based restaurant, she took over as CEO in 2017 and has continued to improve on the existing foundation. She applied some of her past corporate management methods to the restaurant. At first, the farmers and colleagues did not adapt, and she laughed, saying: "As soon as I arrived, everyone said I was so strict."

In the past, the concept of green dining was not yet widespread, and running Xia Mi plant-based restaurant was not easy. After Wang Shuzhen went from investor to operator, she found that running Xia Mi was far more difficult than running a company before. "I once thought about closing it, but when I thought about what Xia Mi means for green dining and organic agriculture, I still decided to keep going." So she made adjustments to the way Xia Mi was run.

Review: Severe ingredient loss in transport, poor management also causes waste

Speaking of the difficulties of running a green restaurant, Wang Shuzhen listed them one by one: staggering fixed expenses such as rent, staff and hardware; poor in-store flow; high ingredient costs and severe loss. "We encountered all the problems a normal restaurant would have, but in the past our ingredients were too expensive, and not tasty enough." She smiled bitterly.

In the general food and beverage industry, the average ingredient cost is about 30% of the price of each dish, while Xia Mi's ingredient costs in the past were much higher. Wang Shuzhen explained that the restaurant buys directly from farmers, and the agricultural products come from various counties and cities across the country, but ingredient loss was severe, with nearly 15-20% of purchased ingredients unusable.

The loss mainly came from transport. To save shipping space, farmers packed agricultural products of different firmness into the same box, and the ingredients were damaged by rubbing against each other during transport, which also shortened their shelf life. In addition, improper ingredient management also caused waste. Wang Shuzhen said: "Sometimes the fridge at home has vegetables bought but not cooked, and the restaurant is the same."

Visiting partners to seek treasures and communicate new models

Xia Mi's ingredients must meet the "three noes": no pesticides, no herbicides, no ripening agents. The first step of improvement was to start with the ingredients. Wang Shuzhen identified the higher expense items from the accounts and visited the production areas one by one. "These farmers and suppliers are essentially our regular lineup, yet some of them had never once come to eat at Xia Mi." After going to the production areas, there were many unexpected gains.

"In the past we always bought product A, but when we went to the production areas we discovered there was product B that was more suitable for cooking." Besides ingredients, Wang Shuzhen also communicated with farmers about ingredient transport and interaction. Even in the same box, soft and hard items had to be separated, and photos had to be taken before shipment. After the restaurant received them, it immediately cut them open to confirm their condition, so that if there was damage during delivery, claims would not be impossible.

There were more things to confirm in communication, but the time needed became less. Wang Shuzhen changed agricultural product management to regular, fixed-quantity purchasing. For example: farmers ship a specific number of kilograms of rice at 2 p.m. every Tuesday, and adjustments are made only under special circumstances.

100% ingredient utilization, new tricks from cherishing food

Although rules were set, Wang Shuzhen also gave farmers flexibility: "Ugly ingredients, too big or too small, as long as they are not spoiled, can all be sent." Lower-priced off-grade produce takes more time to process, but she also pushed ingredient utilization to the maximum.

Walking into the kitchen, colleagues were handling just-delivered baby corn and beetroot, peeling off the outer leaves and corn silk, and cutting off the outer skin into a pot. "These will be used next to make stock, and the flavor will have better layers." Wang Shuzhen explained. And for ingredients sold in the store, if they are nearing their best-by date, they are also used in dishes. At present, the restaurant's ingredient loss and waste are close to zero.

With regular, fixed-quantity purchasing of agricultural products, Xia Mi plant-based restaurant, in order to speed up turnover and use the trimmings cut from ingredients, holds occasional handmade cooking classes so that more people can learn about ingredients and their uses. At the same time, it has developed other products, such as papaya pound cake and dragon fruit cheesecake, which have become seasonal limited-edition products.