Going organic, is it a fad, a lifestyle or a neat way of impressing customers?

We investigate.

Organic food and being green are this season's hot trends, really hot! Consumers are buying organic produce in the supermarket in growing quantities and they seem prepared to pay almost twice the price of conventionally produced products to avoid pesticides and chemicals in and around their food.

As the hospitality industry responds and embraces this trend by putting organic ingredients on the menu, we are seeing a classic tension building between price and perceived benefit. America loves plentiful and inexpensive dining. We eat out more than any other nation and our consumers have always been incredibly price sensitive when it comes to food items. Starbucks increases the price of an already exorbitant cup of Joe by 25c and you would think that a barrel of oil had just hit $100 from the fuss everyone makes. No one wants to run a restaurant that is more expensive than the competition unless you are trying to give your cash register time off.

I went in search of the business reasons behind going organic. My thinking, which proved totally wrong, was that there must be money in this, or why else would someone go to all the trouble.

John Elkhay - owner of the Chow Fun Food Group - is either Rhode Island's most successful independent restaurateur or has the best PR company on the planet. He is a cheerful, experienced and focused businessman. His business card carries the title "Maestro" and on the back has no less than five logos for the various successful restaurants that he operates in Rhode Island. Among them is Citron, a chic and classy wine bar and bistro situated in Providence. Citron is "organic" right down to the coffee.

"At a certain point in your life you start thinking about your family and what you are turning over to them," said John when I asked him why he went organic.

What! This was the first inkling that the whole green/organic thing is a bit more profound than just a business decision. "When I ate spareribs that had no growth hormones and the cow had been fed a vegetarian diet, I said, ‘wow!' and thought to myself, ‘I really hope that we can afford to sell this'," John recounts. It was obvious now that Citron might be a business and it might be in business to make a profit, but for John this whole thing is more about what he, his family, his friends - and ultimately his customers - are eating more than anything else.

John tells a great tale about the whole process of getting an organic restaurant up and running. "I started looking into organics for the restaurant. Onions are double the price! I was shocked," he moaned. "Organic filet is $22 a pound. To make it acceptable to the market we do a 6oz. filet and a single starch or vegetable." Finally we arrive at the business part of this equation. Organic food costs a great deal more than mass produced, chemical drenched, carbon-using items. They tend to come from smaller local farms and producers, both are labor intensive. To meet the market's desire for reasonable prices, John has had to compromise a little on the size and quantity of food.

The public is very interested in healthy eating. In a recent survey by Technomic, Inc. for American Express (see previous article) consumers were strongly interested in natural and organic foods and 69% of them thought that organics were pesticide free and 64% thought they were preservative and hormone free. So they may like the idea, but will they pay a premium for it in a restaurant? John shrewdly wanted to avoid an "expensive" restaurant label for Citron. He has adjusted and honed the menu with clever use of portion control and adding only a premium that is acceptable to the average diner.

Not everything at Citron is organic. "A few things don't make sense, pepper and salt are examples, they are so expensive that it is not worth the impact it would have on the overall menu price," he recounted. It's not a religion, just a philosophy. Some things are very mainstream. "You read about the condition chickens are bred in and how horrible they are," he said, "you realize how many hormones and antibiotics you are ingesting." That's pretty much the attitude of most chefs in New England. Some things are more esoteric. "Organic coffee is very important to me, I drink a lot of coffee. What's on the coffee beans winds up in you. There is also the question of fair trade, making sure that you are not taking unfair advantage of coffee farmers." John is, like me, an avid coffee drinker, so coffee makes it onto the list of things that must be organic in his restaurants.

John is uniquely positioned to be running an organic restaurant. When I asked him if he would still do it if this was his first restaurant, he candidly replied, "Opening a restaurant is tough enough without trying to be organic from the start." As a shrewd judge of his local market John knows that an unknown restaurateur might have a tougher time with such a project than he has had.

Organics have spread throughout the Elkhay empire since Citron opened. Most of his restaurants now offer organic wines and 10, his steak and sushi restaurant, offers organic steak. It's very expensive though and sells by the number of ounces the customer wants to pay for rather than by the more normal 8oz., 16oz., etc.

There's a great deal of interest in the subject of being green, offering natural foods and being organic. "Being organic is different from marketing yourself as organic," John contended. Citron is pretty unusual in its total adoption of organic principles. The company also tries to be as green as possible and here I found a common theme with last month's "Going Green" article. Organic is a subset of being "green." As soon as you start talking about organic produce you stray into the "buying produce locally issues" and the impact that has on reducing fossil fuel usage and so on.

Holly Safford, founder and president of The Catered Affair recently announced an organic division and is very open about her own motivation for establishing her new business unit group. "I think it's a more philosophical decision because I believe that it's the right thing to do. As a small business I think we need to be more earth friendly and earth conscious," she said. "By offering organic fare we can help make more people aware, help sustain local farming and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases as food is not transported as far."

"I love the idea of working with local farmers, even though it's easier to work with a traditional vendor who delivers everything to your loading dock," she said. Holly believes that the whole organic and green movement is a powerful change in the way we approach food. She acknowledges that not everyone "gets it" at the moment. "There are people for whom only the price, the food quality and impressive wines are important," she noted.

"We have a short growing season in New England, so supplies are limited and they are in great demand," Holly continued "Going 100% organic is just impractical at the moment. Some things are just not available."

I asked Holly if she could see the day when the large produce providers delivered organic and locally produced items directly to her, acting as a broker for the smaller vendors. "I think that would be a bad thing! We want to keep things small and local. It would not be good if organic became just another arm of the foodservice agribusiness. That business is guilty of so many wrongs and responsible for so much of what we don't like about the food business."

Holly is convinced about the flavor and taste of both organic and locally produced products. "I love local artisan cheeses, they are outstanding," she said. "The flavors and the way the food presents will be of great interest to many people, the difference in the flavor of dairy products and vegetables is remarkable."

I asked her how the new business unit was going. "I haven't had a lot of requests for organic events yet, but that's not why I did this. I believe it will become more popular and I predict things will continue to move forward and become more refined."

My quest for the clever business rational behind going green or moving to organic food and beverages has come up strangely empty. If the folks in this month's article or last month's on going green are to be believed - they are doing it for the good of their conscience and the planet in general.

I found the whole subject oddly disturbing. Most of us are apparently wolfing down chemicals and reducing the planet to a wasteland of carbon footprints. Perhaps we had all better get with the program! Pass the organic coffee, someone.