Revival Cafe adds new eco-friendly takeout option

There’s a new option on the menu at Revival Cafe in Lexington, but it isn’t something you’ll want to eat. 

This February, the cafe became the second restaurant in town to join the ZeroToGo pilot program, meaning they now offer reusable containers to their takeout and delivery customers. 

The program is offered by LexZeroWaste, a local nonprofit whose commitment to waste reduction in Lexington has prompted initiatives across town. Their research and advocacy work was a catalyst for the Select Board’s adoption of a comprehensive waste reduction plan in 2023. They run a drop-off community composting program called LexSORT. And for over a year, they’ve been partnered with the mobile phone app Recirclable to provide restaurants in town with stainless steel takeout containers. 

For most of that time, that’s meant working with just one restaurant, Royal India Bistro. LexZeroWaste President Laura Swain says the nonprofit has been in talks with other businesses in the past, but up until the recent Revival Cafe addition, none made it to launch. Most have been family-owned businesses, according to Swain. Large-scale operations like chain restaurants, she says, aren’t usually as viable because “it’s a lot more people to convince.” She explained that “at Royal India, the owner is there every single day. We do want to convince other restaurants. The biggest pushback we’ve heard is that they have a lot of staff turnover.”

Revival Cafe breaks the mold a bit with six different locations across Massachusetts. But their commitment to both their Lexington customers and sustainability have made them the right fit. Liza Shirazi, one of the cafe’s co-founders, says they’ve already been conscious about combatting their environmental impact with compostable containers and a discount for customers who bring their own travel mugs.

Introducing reusable to-go containers isn’t something she thinks Revival would be able to take on alone. Through the ZeroToGo program, there is no cost to the business for the first year of container usage. “So there’s really no downside to us,” Shirazi said. “It really makes it that much more accessible for us to do a trial without, you know, having to pay out of pocket and buy a bunch of containers before we know it’s something that works operationally for us.”

That development period can be costly indeed. Just ask Margie Bell, co-founder of the Recirclable app. They provide the necessary software, while LexZeroWaste acts as a sort of liaison between them and Lexington businesses. The app services a total of 12 Massachusetts restaurants. Bell has a background in product management, so she felt prepared, but she pointed to container selection as one of the biggest hurdles.

“I love glass because it’s microwavable and it’s oven safe. I can see what’s in my container if I have leftovers. It’s inert. It’s made in the US,” Bell recalled. It’s what she uses at home, and it’s that functionality that made her keen on implementing glass containers for the app. “Then we had a real wake-up call because, of course, you have to be careful in the kitchen. They don’t stack very well. They’re heavy for customers. So we had to sort of abandon that,” she said.

They ended up settling on two main types of containers, plastic and stainless steel. But when collaboration began with LexZeroWaste, additional research and development was needed to suit the specific needs of the town. 

Jatinder Singh, who runs Royal India Bistro with his brother, noticed customer skepticism about plastic containers before even joining ZeroToGo. “Some people asked before: ‘We don’t want it in plastic containers, can we bring our own containers’?”

Swain wasn’t working with LexZeroWaste when the program was being developed, but she’s seen some dense spreadsheets that arose out of the process. With a clear demand for plastic reduction within the town, those containers were ruled out, but there were other chemical concerns on Lexingtonians’ minds, too.

PFAS (short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a group of chemicals that have been used in a wide array of industries, from automotives to personal care products. They’ve also been in to-go containers as a grease-proofing agent since the ‘60s. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has linked them to harmful health and environmental effects, but there are so many different types of PFAS, each with different use cases, that more research is needed to understand the intricacies of their impact. Because they are not easily broken down by the environment or the human body, they’re often nicknamed “forever chemicals.”

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that these agents are no longer being distributed in food packaging. But the uncertainty surrounding the chemicals still leaves some customers, like ZeroToGo participant Walter Gillett, uneasy. “I really don’t like the idea of having hot food in contact with stuff with chemicals in it. It makes me nervous,” he said.

So, LexZeroWaste settled on the stainless steel containers with silicone tops that are in circulation today, which they supply to any new business upon joining. And although container size varies slightly between the two active locations, the containers can be rinsed and brought back to any participating restaurant in Lexington, where they are cleaned in commercial dishwashers. 

They’re due back at the restaurant two weeks after they leave, which Gillett says isn’t so bad at all. “There’s definitely a recurring business incentive, because you do want to go back and return those containers. And hey, you’re going back there, so hell, let’s buy some food, you know?”

Swain hopes this sort of encouragement will help the program snowball. More restaurants means more options, which in turn means more active users. And the opposite is true, too. The more containers checked-out, the more expressed interest there is—encouraging new restaurants to join. As the network grows, organizers can garner more varied input that teaches them exactly what can be tweaked to increase accessibility for everyone. The larger the network, the more fine-tuned the system can become.