Today we visited Sibö Chocolate, Riverside Gastropub, and a local university. At Sibö Chocolate we learned the history of chocolate, from the Spanish invasion to now, aswel as the sustainability innovations that the owner is constantly making. At Riverside Gastropub, we learned how the owner transformed a burned down disco into a community center and restruant. Finaly, at the university, the lecturer tried to give us life advice then a tour guide took showed us 3D printers and outdated medical devices, as if we had never seen them before; but, the other two places were extremly fun and interesting.
Sibö Chocolate and Riverside Gastropub, while obtaining all three parts, both emphasized different aspects of the triple bottem line which is a sustainability framework highlighting the importance of Profit, People, and the Planet. This framework encourages business owners to look past their own profits and work to build connections within their industry and with the stakeholders of their company. It also asks them to spend a third of their attention on their enviromental impacts and how to minimize the damage that successful businesses inevitably cause.
The owner of Riverside Gastropub described his focus of community. All along the walls of the resturant were contemporary art peices, mostly paintings, from local artists looking to sell their work. Every month, the peices are swapped out or sold. Most the artworks there today had a topic of indigenous culture in the modern world. My favorite piece I saw was probably the acriclic painting of two cows titled “Día del Boyero” by TruTru. The artist blended the paints so well I thought it was oils and I love the contrast of the bright oranges and reds againt the bright teal backround. Even when talking about his farm-to-table botanical garden, the owner of Riverside highlighted the community aspects over the sustaibable aspects of composting and growing his own food. He talked about how it is important for people to know where their food comes from so that they can feel better about what they put into their body. He obviously considers profitability, and he works hard to keep his business sustainable, he just framed his efforts as benificial to the people in his community.
The owner of Sibö Chocolate described his focus of the environment. As a historian, he knew the importance of chocolate to mesoamericanas and he saw much more Costa Ricans were paying for chocolate just because they needed to export cacoa to process it in other countries. Sibö Chocolate was the first to start processing cacao into chocolate within the boarders of Costa Rica. However, the owners also wanted to do their part in keeping Costa Rica sustainable. They went to local coffee farmers and offered to pay them three times the market price for cacao if they kept stretches of land untouched to shade their cacao plants. The owner we talked to was very commited to the idea of bridges of trees between the larger patches of forest. He explained how bugs, birds,and mammals relied on tree coverage to move from place to place while polinating and planting seeds of the plants they encounter. He also described his dedication to using as little plastic as posible; he discovered a way to make strong boxes for his chocolates using the wasted parts of the cacao plant, along with other inovations that he is still working out. His idea spread to France when a french chocolateer visited his store and saw the boxes in use.
I think that, specifically, the local art hanging on the walls of Riverside Gastropub promoting profits for the brand and the use of the originally wasted cacao parts providing inspiration for other chocolate makers shows what the Triple Bottem Line looks like when it is working. It looks like colaboration between the enviroment and the business owners, between the business owners and their community, and between the community and the business’s profits. It is more difficult for a business to fail whenit is connected and supported in so many ways.
