This restaurant runs with no trash cans. ‘It’s the right thing to do’
The restaurant’s owners were caught in the act of hiring an additional trash picker over the weekend on March 3, when four of the six new workers at the restaurant came in unannounced, bringing a total of eight workers to work that day.
The four who showed up were given their assignments, and were supposed to bring their own trash bags to the restaurant. Their first stop was to empty the trash at their own restaurant, where they took more than 14 bags of trash and dumped every single bag of trash into the dumpster.
The trash at the restaurant wasn’t even that big. The restaurant’s trash was contained in four cardboard trays that were stacked on top of one another, and each of those four trays could have fit in a single trash bag, although sometimes the trays even had to be broken up into a dozen little bags.
The restaurant was founded by two families in the early 2000s, and has since grown into a chain of more than 80 locations in 23 states, according to its owners. In the restaurants that they opened, trash was usually picked up at the end of every shift, and sometimes even days later.
“I was really surprised that they didn’t pick up the trash before they came,” said Mark, one of the managers on the night shift when the workers showed up. Mark, who has been working at the restaurant for three years, said he usually didn’t think too much about the workers’ presence, but the four workers who showed up that night made him raise his hand.
“It’s like a second shift here, and they were really on top of it,” he said. “I was surprised, but I was also kinda happy because I really like the idea of it and the reason why we do it.”
The restaurants also were surprised when the trash came in.
“We were like, ‘Oh my god, you’re not going to let us down?’ That’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re here,” Mark said. “
