This is the letter I got back from the owner of Lettuce Eatery:

Dear Julia,

Thank you for your email. We appreciate your constructive criticism, as well as your kind words and favorable ratings. Naturally, we’re disappointed to hear that you’re going to stop eating at Lettuce Eatery.

I’d like to try and respond to some of your specific frustrations.

1. The Health and Safety Procedures around covering items in the refrigerator and using new containers for every order are policies dictated by Toronto Public Health, which we follow, as responsible restaurant operators.

2. You’re right – you shouldn’t be forced to take a bag/fork/napkin if you don’t want one. We’ll make our team more sensitive to this.

3. We currently use the salad lid and ticket system as our most operationally efficient way of documenting an order and keeping the line flowing, however, are currently working on paper/pen free options to be launched and tested at our 5th location (opening this spring). If it’s successful, we’ll be rolling it out company wide.

4. As you’ve mentioned, other companies do produce more waste than Lettuce Eatery, however, we are constantly looking for ways to minimize ours, and your email has provided some great suggestions. I would welcome an opportunity to meet you and discuss “greener” solutions more extensively, as this clearly seems to be an area you are passionate about.

5. Our new shaking method is based on 6 months of research at one of our other locations, where we use significantly less dish soup and water waste compared to stores that still toss salads with a bowl and tong. Since this point wasn’t clear to you, it may not be clear to others, and we’ll post a note in the restaurant with a better explanation around this new process.

We hope you will continue to monitor our progress as we set goals for our company. Please do not hesitate to contact me directly, should you have any other thoughts/suggestions.

All the best,
Matthew Corrin