When Florian Pfahler first moved to the United States, he found a lot of the food uninspiring, for a number of reasons. The flavors and ingredients didn’t speak to him. But above all, the amount of waste generated from a simple lunch out appalled him. Pfahler recalls the first time he was taken to lunch in the U.S. He went to a deli and ordered a sandwich, but by the time he was finished with his meal, he was left with what he described as a “little mountain of garbage.”
“I was blown away by the kind of like, carelessness about the resources. And I thought to myself, if I ever get into this business the first thing I’m going to do is cut down on the waste,” he said.
Now, Pfahler is doing just that with his sandwich concept Hannah’s Bretzel. He founded the concept in Chicago in 2005 with sustainability ingrained into the DNA of the brand.
In the beginning, Pfahler was inspired by Whole Foods’ branding, specifically the focus on community, nutrition and education. The concept is also inspired by Pfahler’s hometown of Stuttgart, Germany. Pfahler said one of the things he missed the most from his hometown is German pretzel bread, and so he made this pretzel bread the staple ingredient at his sandwich concept.
The Summer Porchetta Verde.
The menu features sandwiches like the Summer Porchetta Verde on Baguette or Sergio’s Special which is French jambon de Paris country ham, Swiss gruyere cheese, avocado, with sliced jalapenos and homemade mango chutney.
“When I put all these together, it became I would say the first fast causal restaurant in the city of Chicago focused on organics and whole grains, nutrition, based on the Whole Food’s model which is a strong focus on community, a strong focus on operating in an environmentally responsible way,” he said. “And of course, a focus on very tasty foods with very clean ingredients. That’s been our mission ever since.”
Hannah’s Bretzel has been early to the sustainability game. It used biodegradable products as early as 2006 and was powered by wind and solar power in 2009. Here’s a look at Pfahler’s approach to sustainability and how the brand has adapted over time while staying true to its mission.
Hannah’s Bretzel’s sustainability journey
From the very beginning, Pfahler was invested in making sure his business operated with the environment in mind. It started with simple efforts such as instructing his team to provide only one napkin with orders and avoiding using multiple bags. He also employed practices such as prepping in time to avoid waste. Pfahler was also quick to get on board with biodegradable products, using biodegradable utensils when they became available and then eventually moving to biodegradable packaging. In addition, Hannah’s Bretzel was an early adopter of wind and solar power.
While Pfahler said Hannah’s doesn’t produce much waste due to its production strategy, the concept also partners with sustainability company WasteNot to compost waste in the back of house.
“I’m a big fan of keeping it simple. So, the team behind the line that preps every day is obviously trying to minimize the food that’s getting thrown into compost. And obviously, the GMs and the stores are trained to prep in time,” he said. “So, we never prep ahead of time and then the food spoils and then we throw it away. We have very little waste, also thankfully because of the volume of business that we do.”
Pfahler said that Hannah’s composted 16,000 pounds of food scraps last year and he estimates that this year the brand’s three units will compost anywhere from 20,000 pounds to 25,000 pounds of food scraps.
“But that’s just us, imagine all these restaurants in the U.S., how much food every day gets thrown into the landfill,” he said.
Hannah’s sustainability initiatives don’t end there either, the brand exclusively uses electric Mini Coopers to deliver its food.
“It’s always been a desire of mine because I’m convinced of it personally. And also, to showcase its doable. And you can operate in this industry without using plastic or gas or normal electricity and it’s a benefit that the community embraces and supports and appreciates,” said Pfahler. “But it’s also, really important if you look at the bigger picture of what’s going on with climate change.”
Hannah's Bretzel delivers its food in electric Mini Coopers.
Misconceptions about cost
In some areas, Pfahler has seen cost savings as a result of Hannah’s sustainability initiatives. In other areas, such as packaging, being sustainable is more expensive, but not by much, according to Pfahler.
“I think the big misconception is that being environmentally focused is more expensive. In my mind it isn’t,” he said.
When it comes to packaging, he noted, “It can cost a little bit more. Our customers appreciate that we look out for that. If you calculate this on the literally thousands of tickets we do every year of customers ordering, and we translate the additional cost, the incremental cost, with each ticket, its pennies, pennies.”
The electric vehicles have saved Pfahler money on gas costs and charging them is easy as the garage where Hannah’s parks its cars has electric vehicle chargers.
“It’s giving me huge savings. Huge savings. And the team loves driving the electric car. The community loves us to deliver in the electric car,” he said.
Navigating changes
While the brand’s sustainability mission has held over time, Pfahler has had to adapt to meet changing demands. Hannah’s found a large audience in downtown workers and as the office culture has shifted to include a large proportion of working from home employees, sales declined. Hannah’s lost four of its locations during the COVID-19 pandemic and has spent the past two years recovering and rebuilding.
“We’re still working our way out of that to really understand how the office culture works in the coming years. Is it going to stay where it is today? Is it going to become a little bit more dense again downtown? Right now, the trend is that we see more office dynamics coming back to downtown, its growing,” he said.
One of the big changes Hannah’s has seen is the proportion of diners ordering online. He noted that when Hannah’s first opened, 95% of its business was from walk-in customers. Now that rate is down to 30%. As a result, the brand is looking into shifting into smaller locations.
“It really has completely shifted away from walk-in to delivery, online ordering. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that we don’t need 3000 square feet locations with 75 seats that we churn four or five times at lunch. We can minimize our store footprint and become very efficient by having just smaller store operations that are more focused on delivery and pickup and catering and focused more on the product,” he said.