14th Annual Business Ethics Awards: White Dog Cafe & New Belgium Brewing Company

by Marjorie Kelly

This year is our first for a new award category: the Living Economy Award. We crafted this to celebrate smaller firms, but smallness is only one of our criteria. Our ideal companies are conceived as those that are locally based, human scale, stakeholder-owned, democratically accountable, and life-serving. We wanted enterprises seeking fair profits rather than maximum profits.

The concept is based on the work of theorist David Korten — author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World – whose current focus is on building a living economy, as an alternative to the destructive tendencies of the mainstream economy. The centerpiece of the current problem, he says, is the publicly traded, limited liability corporation, whose sole purpose is using money to make money for people who have money — commonly referred to as maximizing profit to increase shareholder value.

In his on-line paper Living Economies for a Living Planet, Korten likens large public firms to fast-growing, competitive, profligate, and transient species, which represent the colonizing stage of ecosystem growth. Through a process of natural succession, such a stage will ultimately give way to a new network of patient, cooperative, frugal and settled species that learn to efficiently conserve and share the energy and materials on which they mutually depend, he writes. In like manner, he suggests our current pattern of colonizing corporations must give way to a planetary network of living economies. Of course, as biologist Elisabet Sahtouris has added in a comment on Kortens paper, not all entities from the colonizing stage are ultimately replaced – only the ones that do not evolve into a cooperative mode.

White Dog Cafe: Living Economy Award

For being an exemplar of the living economy: locally rooted, human scale, stakeholder-owned, and life-serving.

Its no accident that the first recipient of the Living Economy Award is Judy Wicks and her White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia. So fully does she exemplify Kortens theory of the living economy that he sometimes refers to it as the Judy Economy. In running this restaurant with $5 million in annual revenues and 100 employees, Wicks caring hand reaches into every corner of what a living economy would encompass: the organic meats raised by local farmers, the living wage she aims to pay even to dishwashers, the 100% wind power that runs the place, the 10% of profits given to charity, and the cooperation with would-be competitors.

Business is about relationships more than money, Wicks said at a November speech to the Sustainable Business Symposium at the University of Oregon, Eugene. Every decision shes made, she explained, was because of personal relationships. When I first heard of the living wage, I had a knee-jerk reaction against it, she said. But then she realized this was about the people she worked beside every day, and of course she wanted them to prosper. She set a goal for the year 2000 that every employee would make $8 an hour, the living wage for Philadelphia.

It was a similarly personal reaction that drove Wicks to take pork off her menu, the first time she confronted the reality of confinement pig farms, where pigs spend their entire lives without sun, unable even to turn around in their stalls. The horror of it sent her on a quest for humanely raised pork. And when her head chef Kevin von Klause found it with Amish farmers, he and Wicks realized it wasnt enough to serve it only at the White Dog – far better that many restaurants should serve it. Thus Wicks founded the nonprofit Philadelphia Fair Food Project, to help build the supply lines between sustainable farmers and local restaurants. Its run out of an office in Wicks apartment above the restaurant, where director Ann Karlen has reached out to 40 area chefs, making them aware of the variety of foods available locally.

At the White Dog, we try to increase the capacity to care, Wicks says. One of the ways she uses food to lure innocent customers into social activism is with her Eating with the Enemy tours, which began when she asked herself how a restaurant could help with international peace. She started with Nicaragua, where she established a sister relationship with a restaurant. Now she routinely runs profitable trips of 20 customers and staff to countries like Vietnam and Cuba.

Locally, she partners with minority restaurants, taking customers to the barrio for an art exhibit, dinner, and dance, to encourage them to visit (and return to) neighborhoods they otherwise might not encounter. Then there are the inner city garden tours, the film series on globalization and the local economy, the July 4 Liberty and Justice for All Ball (where a mock-pregnant Wicks gives birth to the nation), the mentoring of 10th graders, and on and on.

As Korten puts it, the living economy is about secure and satisfying work relationships that provide a living wage; its about rejoicing in cultural and racial diversity, strong friendships, stable families, caring communities, and global cooperation based on trust and respect. Its about reaching out to form networks of relationships, creating the strands of a living, life-serving web.And its definitely what the Judy Economy is about. In Wicks own words, the living economy is about how beautiful business can be when its a vehicle for expressing love.

Judy Wicks, White Dog Cafe, 215/386-9224 www.whitedogcafe.com

To Learn More About Living Economies
To promote the growth of the living economy, co-chairs Judy Wicks and Laury Hammel in 2001 helped found the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. It includes 18 local living economy networks, and is developing a web site and marketplace to aid connections. Contact: National coordinator Michelle Long. www.LivingEconomies.org

New Belgium Brewing Company: Environmental Excellence Award

For a dedication to environmental excellence in every part of its innovative brewing process.

The year was 1999, and New Belgium Brewing Co. had just learned — through an in-house environmental audit — that the coal plant supplying its electricity was producing the brewing companys largest CO2 emissions. Co-founder Jeff Lebesch went to a staff meeting of fellow employee-owners, and posed a question. Should the facility switch all its electricity needs to wind power? He explained that it would cost more, which would reduce profits — possibly affecting employee income — and was met with dead silence in the room. But it only lasted a moment. Soon the group decided yes, they should switch. Thus did New Belgium become the first brewer in the U.S. to get 100% of its electricity from wind power. Today its still the largest brewery to consume wind power in the world.

The nature of the decision, the process by which it was made, and certainly its outcome — all speaks volumes about New Belgium Brewing Co. in Ft. Collins, Colo., the award-winning craft brewer that is making a name for
itself in environmental circles. Known for its leading brew called Fat Tire, New Belgium sells its beers in 12 western states and is preparing to distribute in California. Environmental stewardship is threaded throughout its operations, beginning with its mission statement, which is to produce high quality beer true to Belgian brewing styles, in a manner that is both profitable and socially, ethically, and environmentally responsible.

In its brewing operations, the company has developed a series of processes to reduce energy use and CO2 emissions, and is always looking for ways to reduce waste to landfills. For example, the brewery uses natural draft cooling in its cold storage unit during the wintertime, replacing glycol-cooled air. And the brewery is equipped with two swamp cooling systems, one of which cools the office by using outside air blown over warm water, producing colder water that can be used directly to cool the building. Brewing byproducts are made available for dairy farmers to buy as cattle feed.

The companys most recent and innovative step in environmental stewardship was the completion in May 2002 of a biological wastewater facility, used to treat water left after the brewing process. It consists of a combination of anaerobic and aerobic digestion ponds. As these ponds clean the water, they generate usable byproducts like methane and nutrient-rich sludge — and turn out water clean enough to discharge directly into the groundwater or the Poudre River.

The focus on employees gets similar attention at New Belgium. The company has a policy of open book management, so every employee knows what it costs to make a barrel of beer and how much their department contributes to that cost. Theres an annual retreat, and at one point the whole staff of 150 went to Mexico just for fun. Upon reaching the one-year anniversary, each employee receives a gift of a new cruiser bike, and on a typical sunny day, up to a third will be seen riding their bikes to work.

In the future, New Belgium is set to triple its annual capacity from its current 250,000 barrels to 750,000 barrels. But co-founders Kim Jordan, CEO, and her husband Jeff Lebesch are mindful of the need for sustainable growth, rather than maximum growth. New Belgium Brewing is a place where quality of life — both for the environment and for humans — is central to their notion of business success.

Kim Jordan, CEO, New Belgium Brewing Co., 970/221-0524 www.newbelgium.com

The other award winner is Fastener Industries, for its commitment to democratic governance and employee ownership.

Other Finalists:
Employee Ownership
Antioch Co. — At this employee-owned firm, profit-sharing is equal among all employees, and the mission is to serve human needs by making a difference in the way people remember, celebrate, and connect.

Reell Precision Manufacturing — To avoid layoffs in a recent downturn, people at this employee-owned firm took pay cuts, with larger cuts at the top, and none at the bottom. The company mission is to further individual development and the common good.

Environmental Excellence
Collins & Aikman — This firm was the first manufacturer to fully recycle carpet on a commercial scale and introduce a commercial floor covering product with significant recycled content.

Living Economy
Organic Valley — This $100 million operation is the largest organic farmer-owned cooperative in the nation. Its 460 farmer members decide how much to pay themselves, and each member has one vote.

South Mountain — This employee-owned design/build firm aims to create buildings that stand as worthy expressions of humane, well-crafted, environmentally sound architecture.

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