Top Provider of Custom and Standard Chef Wear Just Went Green | 3BL Media

(3BLMedia/theCSRfeed) December 28, 2009 – Green Business League has certified Culinary Classics as an authentically Green Company because of their Green clothing line and Green Practices.  This company has been around for many years and is a family owned uniform company providing uniform apparel for chefs, waiters, bus boys, and more. Your staff can look forward to wearing made-to-order uniforms which complement female, long, short, and plus sizing from XS-7X. They require no minimums, as well as offering complementary design consultation. They are located out of the Chicago, IL area where they make garment from start to finish ensuring the highest quality and the uniforms from there can be delivered anywhere in the country.

Culinary Classics stimulates restaurant and kitchen environments all over the country by providing custom solutions of unique styles and flavors for each location. By combining outstanding customer service, enthusiastic consultation, and a product line of the highest quality, comfort and style, the Culinary Classics brand becomes exactly what you want to wear.

Just as the best recipes benefit from the highest quality ingredients, the perfect combination of flavors and the most stunning presentation, so does their uniforms. At Culinary Classics you can create the perfect visual representation of your character and style because every order is made to order. You choose your product, fabric, size, pockets, buttons–everything. Let your customers know from their first glance what kind of enterprise yours is through the design of your uniform.

Because they make our products after you have placed your order, they have the ability to produce clothing that is exactly what you want. The four step process located under the “Build Your Own” link clearly outlines how to create a customized order. In the “Build Your Own” process you have the option of designing your own fabrics, colors, and styles to make your perfect coat that reflects you or your company all by the click of a mouse. You can also just call one of our sales representatives and they will be more then will to help you through the process.           

Culinary Classics also offers a catalog, which you can receive for free through the mail, our online store gives you the option of selecting winning combinations of some of our more popular products. Every order is still made to order, except the few in-stock items they keep on our shelves, but they do offer the option of purchasing some of our favorite creations online.

When customers ask us for our best chef coat, they make sure to explain that each chef has their own best chef coat. It depends on what you need; it depends on what you like. Here are some descriptions of our classic fabrics, each with their own characteristics. If you would like to get a swatch sent to you, or you have questions about what’s right for you, just ask!

Culinary Classics has a new and 100% Organic Cotton is 6.5 oz, USDA certified and available in White. Organic cotton is grown and processed without the use of pesticides and other chemicals which pollute the earth and our environment. One of the more exotic styles in the Premium Egyptian Cotton which is one of the most luxurious fabrics, premium Egyptian cotton has an incredibly soft feel. Lightweight and breathable, this 100% cotton fabric is truly a mark of elegance. Also, the cotton / rayon blend has a smooth and silky feel and touch. Try these fabrics for your next uniform involving shirts, hats, pants and ties.

Visit the Culinary Classic homepage to see more types of uniforms and what fabrics they use.  At their website you can build your own uniform or contact someone if you are interested.  Take a look around their website and I gaurantee you will like what you see.  The Green Business League is proud to certify Culinary Classic because they are dedicated company that wants to help the environment and make the best quality uniforms available.

CSR Minute:12/11/09 – Dawn’s Wildlife Charity; Larry’s Beans’ Organic Growth

Corporate Social Responsibility News: Dawn’s Wildlife Charity; Larry’s Beans’ Organic Growth

Two Mission-Driven Food Businesses Collaborate To Beat The Recession | 3BL Media

(3BLMedia/theCSRfeed) Boston, MA – December 7, 2009―Two award-winning socially responsible enterprises, Dancing Deer, the women-led natural baking company and Equal Exchange, the worker-owned Fair Trade pioneer have joined forces to solve your gifting andholiday party needs–all while supporting some great causes.  The “Taste of New England Gift Baskets” feature the award-winning Molasses Clove Cookies and other tasty treats from Dancing Deer complemented by some of Equal Exchange’s most popular organic, Fair Trade coffee, tea and chocolates. The gift baskets also include two other local, independent enterprises; locally produced honey from Reseska Apiaries ofHolliston and trail mix from Fastachi ofWatertown.

The CEO’s of Dancing Deer and Equal Exchange, Trish Karter and Rob Everts, have been professional friends for years and often noodled the challenge of how to work together and help each other build their businesses which have so many parallel values.  Both companies have won manyawards for their socially responsible business practices and have been lauded for having two of the most democratically organized workplaces. Both are members of Boston’s Sustainable Business Network, and Trish and Rob have shared in a CEO roundtable with other local mission-driven entrepreneurs. So when Dancing Deer decided to bring out a gift basket line, the opportunity to collaborate was obvious.

It’s been a tough year in the food business and particularly in the world of gifts as consumers and corporations have ratcheted back on spending. However Dancing Deer and Equal Exchange appeal on two levels―great product and a commitment to environmental sustainability and social justice.  This might be considered good marketing and strategy, which it is, but this double bottom line approach is driven by the convictions of the founders and employees of these organizations.   Equal Exchange supports small-scale organic farmers around the world through its Fair Trade program.  Dancing Deer dedicates one of its product lines (the Sweet Home Project) to funding scholarships for homeless mothers by donating 35% of the retail price on those gifts in addition to its broader double bottom line mission.

Rob Everts said about the collaboration: “Given all the values our companies share in common plus Dancing Deer’s hard-won reputation for both delicious food and serving the community, we’re really pleased to finally work together and have our products alongside theirs.”

Trish Karter returned the compliment by adding: “Equal Exchange has done some really important work in the Fair Trade movement, their products are terrific and I love their broader mission and values”.

About Dancing Deer
Dancing Deer is a company of people who are passionate about food, nature, aesthetics and community. Known for yummy, all-natural cakes, cookies, brownies and baking mixes, the company has won many national awards and accolades for its distinctive products and innovative business practices. All employees are stakeholders in this women-led enterprise. Sold in gourmet, natural food and conventional grocerystores nationwide, the company also ships directly to consumers (www.dancingdeer.com 1-888-699-DEER) and offers creative marketing programs to corporate customers. When people are happy it shows in the food!

About Equal Exchange
A pioneer and U.S. market leader in Fair Trade since 1986, Equal Exchange is a full service provider of high quality, organic coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa, healthy snacks and bananas. Major customers include Whole Foods, Stop & Shop, Hannaford, Ten Thousand Villages, schools and places of worship nationwide. 100% of Equal Exchange products are fairly traded, benefiting more than 40 small farmer co-operatives in 22 countries around the world.  In keeping with its Fair Trade mission and belief in economic democracy Equal Exchange is a worker co-operative, owned and governed by its approximately 110 employees. http://Shop.EqualExchange.com.

via 3blmedia.com

Sustainability Tips from Colorado Rocky Mountain School Students

Problem: The US throws away almost 50% of their food every year. That is approximately 52 tons of food annually. Just 5% of America’s food leftovers alone could feed 4 million people for a day. At CRMS even though we compost all of our waste, we are still disposing of 250 pounds of compostable waste per week. So while we are keeping it out of the landfill, we are still wasting it.

Solution: While we no longer use cafeteria trays at CRMS as it encourages overloading. We still need to remember to take only as much food as you can finish. It is better to go back for seconds than to take too much food the first time and end up throwing it away.

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My Journey for Sustainable Food

Last winter, my husband Dan and I noticed we were beginning to struggle in our quest for fresh, local food. As a Californian learning to endure my first Boston winter, I wanted more variety in our produce. At the same time Dan, a culinary school student, was learning more and more about the role of things like corn syrup and stabilizers in processed food. Between the two of us, we often ended up wondering what we could do to ensure that what we put into our bodies was healthy, fresh and ultimately unprocessed. So we took up cooking more and expanded our repertoire to include items like homemade bread, chicken stock, ice cream and others. Still, in hindsight we relied more often than we would have liked on cheap meat, poultry and dairy – often because it was what we could afford.

All of this came full circle recently in the sustainability class I took a few weeks ago. The day we talked about global food production – including factory farms, or Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFOs) in the U.S. – I felt like the world opened up and swallowed me with it.

In Factory Farms, animals are packed in high-density pens, often with little or no room to move.
(Ashley’s Note: CAFOs are hugely depressing operations, in my opinion. For your sake and mine, I am not going to recount just how unhealthy and harmful these farms are for animals, for humans, for our economy and for our environment. I’ll just say that for a brief intro, google “Factory Farm” and see what comes up…)

Anyway, I had always wanted to believe that factory farming wasn’t my problem. Sure, Dan and I would buy our meat at big grocery stores and not really ever give any thought to where it came from. But, hey, this kind of farming was going on somewhere far away – so we couldn’t really see it. Plus, we were starving students and the meat was cheap. Right? Wrong.

In fact these are all really lame excuses.

Please visit The Changebase Blog to continue reading this commentary.

Ashley Jablow is a 2nd year MBA student, former nonprofit Fundraiser and Corporate Philanthropy Intern, and a motivated Changemaker.

Food, Inc. (movie review)

Chris MacDonald’s commentary appears originally and regularly on his blog The Business Ethics Blog, and is redistributed via 3BL Media with his expressed consent.

I finally saw Food, Inc. Frankly, I didn’t expect to like it much. I expected a one-sided, misleading anti-corporate tirade, along the lines of The Corporation. I was only partly correct. The main message really does seem to be that big companies are ruining everything, and that things would be better if we all just realized that we should be buying directly from the kindly farmer/sage down the road. But in spite of that slant, the movie does contain some useful stuff. So, my conclusion: a grudging endorsement. I think the film is flawed, but worth seeing.

First, I’ll note a couple of worthwhile take-away lessons, points that are made by the film and that seem well-justified.

Number one is that the meat industry is pretty disgusting. Most of the people who might be tempted to see Food, Inc. likely already knew that. But it’s a rotten industry. Injury rates for workers are high. Animals are treated badly. And quality control can be dodgy. The causes are pretty clear. Competition drives companies in all industries to cut corners in order to attract and keep customers. Sometimes that has undesirable effects. In the food industry, those effects can be pretty bad. Food, Inc. doesn’t tell us much that’s new, here, but it’s a useful reminder.

Number two: the corn subsidies in the U.S. are apparently insane. Those subsidies result in overproduction of corn (and hence of High-Fructose Corn Syrup). The result is that crappy food can be more affordable than nutritious food. Politically-powerful food companies like the subsidies (since they keep the price of ingredients down) so the food-buying public is likely to go on being subject to all the wrong incentives.

(For more on that topic, see the excellent 2007 documentary, King Corn.)

But in several ways the movie is less than satisfying.

Click here to continue reading..

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The 2010 Our Daily Bread Prize Calls for Submissions

With the success of previous years “Our Daily Bread” candidate proposals on how to sustain and create better processes behind Food Security, Vital Systems is looking for new team and community oriented submissions for this year’s event. I’ve taken the liberty of copying the details and instructions to their campaign and adding it below.

Past, present, and future steps to address this goal include:

The 2010 Our Daily Bread Prize Calls for Submissions for sustainable food and farming solutions written as proposed or proven case studies that overcome specific integrated social, environmental, governance/policy, and financial/business challenges. Candidate submissions must be written for a planned publication with a video component that communicates key messages to a wide, diverse audience. Interdisciplinary teams are encouraged.

2010 Our Daily Bread Prize

The $10,000 2010 Prize will be awarded as one $5,000 grand prize and two $2,500 finalist prizes. The winners will be notified during October, 2010 and will be formally announced at a venue that is yet to be finalized.

Current activities (2008-2010):

• As a project of Vital Systems, the host of the 2010 Our Daily Bread Prize, we call for papers that integrate food and farming practices presented as proposed and proven best cases of the most effective ways to secure our food sources, change our eating habits (for both personal and planetary health), halt the extinction of many of the world’s species, and grow economic justice through the visions, strategies, life goals, tools, and rewards we craft to be compatible with our new world story. Many thanks to the jurors who have stepped forward to select the best submissions from among us responding to this Call as candidates and candidate teams. We will have the honor of presenting and thanking them formally and publicly after the completion of their deliberations of candidate submissions and selection of our 2010 Our Daily Bread Prize winners.
• We also welcome you to serve as a Community Outreach Leader by sending Calls for Submissions to your communities to reach a significant number of potential candidates. In addition, if you publish a newsletteror e-newsletter, participate in working groups, consultancies, or associations, or have relationships with authors or media associates working on behalf of expanding food and farming business practices to include impacts on people and places worldwide, please forward both the Call for Submissions for the 2010 Our Daily Bread Prize and the 2010 Our Daily Bread Prize Frequently Asked Questions, or contact us! All final candidate submissions are due by August 11, 2010.
• In addressing the challenges of systemic collapse, one important path to success is to ensure that information on which we can act is clear, current, and accessible to a broad and diverse public. As our Co-evolve logo connotes, Sustainable Ventures and now Vital Systems gathers collective knowledge and then translates what we have compiled so that we each can act effectively in implementing sustainability in our own lives. Vital Systems is actively seeking collaborating organizations to create a long standing entity to sustain this function.

For more information

Visit Vital Systems online at www.VitalSystemsCA.com. Prospective Candidates and Jurors, please refer to the  Our Daily Bread Prize FAQ: http://www.vitalsystemsca.com/download/2010_ODB_Prize_FAQ.pdf