The Future of On-Site Gardens in the Restaurant Industry
April 1st, 2025 Written by Saige Traise
As we move into the future of food service, it is the responsibility of all operators to become conscious of sustainability in their restaurants and think creatively about changing practices. But modern-day problems sometimes don’t always require such modern-day, high-tech solutions. What I wanted to explore was how restaurants today are using the land around them and growing their own food as a way to future-proof their business. To do this, I got the chance to speak with representatives from 2 vastly different restaurants across Ontario and get an understanding of how on-site gardens change their operations and contribute to a more sustainable business model.
Building a Greener Future
It’s no secret that the environmental impact of your meal at a restaurant actually begins way before the food touches your plate. In the food system that Canada has come to accept, the ingredients you eat could have been picked, packaged, and shipped from anywhere in the world and you would never have to quantify just what consequences that may bring about. However, due to the sprouting trend of restaurants growing their own produce, much of the environmental side effects can be avoided.
I got the chance to speak with Chef and Owner Daniel Hadida at Restaurant Pearl Morissette, a Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant located in Ontario’s Niagara region. When asked about the impact of the restaurant’s vast and diverse gardens on sustainability, he emphasized the value of its reduction to their carbon footprint. Generally, getting food from the farm to your front door involves the immense burning of fossil fuels through transportation and wasteful packaging that is meant to keep ingredients fresh and protected. By taking that entire process out of the equation and growing your own food, you already eliminate a huge portion of carbon emissions that would have otherwise been unavoidable. Though Hadida emphasized that this makes up 95% of the sustainable benefits of on-site gardens, he also went on to mention the upsides of knowing no chemicals, pesticides, and artificial fertilizers have leached into their produce as it’s grown under naturally controlled conditions.
Stephanie Redmond, the Garden Manager with Heart’s Tavern in Kimberly, Ontario, built on this idea of sustainability and discussed how vital it is for her team to be knowledgeable enough to make the most of their grown resources. In being able to plan and monitor throughout the season, they have found a way to boost yields by utilizing different parts of the plant for different dishes. This not only cuts down on the food waste that is produced at the end of the meal period but also creates a space for out-of-the-box thinking, allowing chefs to become more knowledgeable and conscious in how they go about menu design and features.
Regardless of how each restaurant leverages its sustainable garden initiatives, it is incredibly clear that a shift toward locally grown produce can have an immense impact not only on the environment but also on the opportunities available to the restaurant.
Behind the Scenes
Navigating Seasonality
Living in a seasonally variable climate comes with the challenge of understanding how to make the most of your crops in the growth and harvest seasons in order to provide some sustenance and summer flare throughout the winter months. Depending on their resources, each establishment would go about this in a different way.
Both of my interviewees delved into their use of preservation as a method of prolonging yields. While each restaurant comes from an entirely different context, with Heart’s Tavern more closely reflecting a stable menu throughout the year and Pearl Morisette following the “farm-to-table” attitude of designing the menu around what is in season, both found value in traditional methods such as pickling, fermenting, packing, and curing. Hadida and Pearl Morissette take this one step further and jump into the use of time-tested methods, like having a root cellar. While the geography of the region and its feature of high water levels make it difficult to have a root cellar in its true form, the substitution of a walk-in fridge feature in their barn has been a highly effective modern-day alternative. Raising yield opportunities even more, the restaurant’s farms also employ the help of artificial growing enclosures, such as a marginally heated hoop house and a Caterpillar tunnel. Each of these greenhouse methods provides an opportunity for certain crops to survive through Ontario’s sub-zero winters.
One factor that was highlighted as important to consider was to avoid going into preservation with a scarcity mindset. In trying to save every single scrap it’s easy to stray away from what is actually useful and, in the end, do yourself more harm than good. Hadida mentioned the importance of staying in the middle of the “delicious” and “edible” Venn diagram, while also not trying to artificially recreate the charm of summer. As with all things, compensating for the off-season is done best when approached with moderation in a hopeful, yet reasonable manner.
Opportunities and Obstacles
In implementing such an undertaking as self-grown produce, it is important to understand that with all of the incredible opportunities, there will also be some obstacles to learn from and overcome. What those challenges will be are entirely based on the experience of the land and staff, the scale of the restaurant, and the resources available.
Opening within the last 10 years, Hadida described some of the road bumps Restaurant Pearl Morissette had to go through to get where it stands today. With input costs and initial overhead being a huge undertaking, he and business partner Eric Robertson had to go into the project with incredible passion and vision. It took some time to grasp the best practices, from understanding how much produce to preserve to dealing with the year-to-year shift of local climate and ecology, but in the end, the effort was all worth it. Trial and error and gathering experience have made all the difference for the restaurant, which now flows smoothly in its patterns.
Coming from a managerial perspective, Redmond outlines that one large challenge she faces is staffing for garden maintenance. Working both in front of the house and in the garden has given her unique strengths, but when demands are high in the restaurant it can be hard to find the time to complete all the essential day-to-day activities that make a garden thrive. It can be easy to overlook just how laborious it is to maintain freshly grown produce and herbs, when in reality it takes long hours of care and attention for it to thrive.
This being said, getting past these speed bumps comes with plenty of rewards. Hadida highlights the irreplaceable opportunity that Restaurant Pearl Morissette has due to its self-sustaining garden. Because of the niche and delicate ingredients that are grown and featured in many of the dishes, the restaurant would need to alter its entire business model if it were to outsource. This is because financially and logistically, it would simply be impossible to buy from local producers. Another great benefit that they have seen is the education and excitement from staff members across the board. Chefs are being given the chance to work with premium, fresh ingredients and given creative ground in a way that is hard to find elsewhere. Gardeners, who often still come from a culinary background, are gaining a greater understanding and appreciation for the cycle of food and how to best transfer the harvest into something usable.
Redmond builds on this idea and discusses the greater sense of purpose that those in the back of house at Heart’s Tavern have gained since implementing the garden. Their chefs feel empowered and given creative freedom when they see what they have to work with, growing right at their fingertips. A sense of community has also been fostered throughout the restaurant and everybody is excited to learn about the next feature and see how what they’ve watched grow can be transferred into a sellable meal. Both staff and guests are given the opportunity to learn about growing and the future of small-scale farming for restaurants. The hope it gives people is enough of a draw for guests and a reason to continue the pursuit.
Cost-Effective Investment or Operating Expense?
While for these restaurants money is not the main factor, as with any business, it is still one to consider. When asked whether their gardens represent a cost-effective investment or an operational expense, my interviewees had conflicting answers. For Redmond and Heart’s Tavern, the gardens are more representative of an operational expense. The scale at which their garden operates cuts down food costs and generates enough interest to cover its expenses, but it is not bringing in a large sum of extra revenue. Hadida takes on the opposing perspective and says that, in its function and scale, the gardens are a cost-effective investment. As I mentioned above, Pearl Morissette would be simply unable to operate as it currently does if it were to outsource everything that it now grows. Coming down to even the florals in the restaurant – estimated to cost $20k+ annually if done externally – there is no way the restaurant would be able to financially justify their current methods if they were not the ones supplying them.
The answer to “cost-effective investment or operating expense?” is going to be a deeply personal question that alters based on the many factors of a restaurant to be considered. Neither one is better than the other, it is simply dependent on the goals and model of the organization to decide where the restaurant should fall in the spectrum.
Elevating the Dining Experience
As the world makes the shift from an affinity towards the “service economy” to the “experience economy”, we see those two worlds clash here. While the act of getting food at a restaurant is a service, it is the unique selling points highlighted by the gardens that make coming to these establishments truly an experience.
The most crucial part of developing that experience for guests comes from the storytelling and enhancement of the dining. Everything from the ambiance of the property to the attitudes and conversation provided by the front-of-house staff builds on the unique experience of eating food on the same land where it was grown. Telling, and more importantly showing, the journey of the food guests get to eat is an experience like no other, especially for those coming from urban areas. To build on this, both Restaurant Pearl Morissette and Heart’s Tavern offer guests the opportunity to tour through the gardens, fostering a connection to their meal and even providing education on the vitality of such systems.
Hadida delved into the importance of being honest with guests about the goals and processes of the restaurant, explaining that people can see straight through lies or marketing tactics if there is no sustenance behind them. In today’s society where commercialization is so rampant, it can be hard to find a truly transparent experience, where the results speak for themselves, and that can be just as refreshing for people as the fresh produce.
Large windows in Restaurant Pearl Morissette allow diners to feel even more connected to the land that their meals have been grown on
Delving into the marketing and front-of-house aspects of things, Redmond walked me through the unique opportunity she has to interact directly with guests. In a serving role, you have the chance to walk guests through their dining experiences, sharing with them the story of their food and providing a special connection between them and their meal. That experience is what continues to draw people in again and again and set Heart’s Tavern above the crowd in a highly competitive industry.
Final Thoughts
As we look into the future landscape of the food service industry, it is clear that restaurants are going to need to become a lot more creative in their efforts to function in a sustainable fashion. While a higher prevalence of restaurants operating with their own gardens would come with tremendous positive environmental impact, it is important to consider that it is not feasible for most places to go about it as the restaurants in this blog have. Whether it be spatial constraints, financial limitations, or staffing shortages, many establishments do not have the resources to justify a full-scale garden. Upfront costs can be debilitating for those who are not passionate about enacting change and those without a strong vision for the future.
To anybody wishing to operate their restaurant with a farm-to-table mindset, it would be false to deny there are challenges along the way but understand they lead to an incredibly rewarding opportunity. Take inspiration from the stories of Pearl Morissette and Heart’s Tavern and apply those concepts in a way that works for your business model. Every action taken, no matter how small, leads us one step closer to a more sustainable, future-proof, foodservice indust
University of Guelph Sustainable Restaurant Project 