We try to apply Brecht's work and ideology in our own way in the café. We buy as many products as possible from companies that we trust. We avoid big brands as much as possible. So no wholesale wine, no beer from multinational brewers and different cheeses every week from a good small-scale organic cheese maker. We buy these at the farmers market on Haarlemmerplein.
But let's go further. In the products that we use for cleaning and other jobs, we also try to work with great companies as much as possible.
For example, we use happy soap cleaning products. Aren't the toilet rolls bleached, made in the Netherlands and so on? sustainably possible. The paper that we use for the menus is also loaded with sustainability label stamps.
We are serving more and more drinks Bag in Box (LIBRARY). This saves a lot of bottles. For example, our red house wine comes from a Bib, but also apple juice and vodka. Our sparkling water comes from the tap. That saves a lot of bottles. With this sparkling water, we also make a lot of lemonades ourselves. For example, we sell almost no bottled lemonades. This saves an enormous amount of transport kilometers. We have no candles on the table. Candles are made of oil and are therefore not sustainable.
For transport, we use an old-fashioned Dutch cargo bike that we had electrically made at Workcycles.
And so there are a lot of small things where we try to choose the more sustainable option. We mop with cold water. The vacuum cleaner is from a brand where all parts can be replaced. So if something breaks on the thing, you only replace a part.
This also applies to our coolers and other devices. We always buy devices that are too repairing are. Cheap refrigerators often have no spare parts, which is why we opt for more expensive appliances that use more energy efficiently and whose spare parts are available. This way, in the event of a defect, we do not have to replace the entire cabinet.
Oh, and then we forget about the interior. All chairs, tables and benches come from the cycle. Just like most of the dishes. So you always get your chocolate in a different mug. And recently, we stopped buying 'new' cutlery. Thrift stores always have a huge bin of used knives, forks and spoons. Here we will wait with patience until we have a few nice ones again. In short, we try to apply sustainability in its broadest sense.
Below is a list of our suppliers
German Beers: Urstoff.nl
Other beers: Butchers Tears, Walhalla, Homeland, Jopen
Cider: Uwe Betuwe cider
Wine: Mark van de wijn, Vleck wines
Cheese: changing from the market on Haarlemmerplein every week
Coffee: Simon Levelt
Tea: Teabar
Straws: Strawz
Cleaning: Happy Soaps and Seepje
Distilled. Van wees drinks wholesaler. Amsterdam republic
