The White Dog Cafe

The difficulty Judy had in exiting her business suggests the big questions facing others who might follow in her path. How can anyone possibly copy the personal signature of the White Dog? Yet many aspiring restaurateurs from around the country come each year to the White Dog, study what Judy has done, and incorporate elements in their own businesses. “I don’t discourage people from going into the restaurant business,” Judy says. “Restaurants are an incredibly viable vehicle for what I’ve been successfully doing for twenty-five years. A lot of people have been inspired by White Dog and have told me as much. They might not do all that we do, they might do different pieces or parts of what we do, but they do borrow. I want to continue to encourage young and idealistic people to use restaurants as a vehicle [for social change].”

Still, the White Dog story suggests many of the challenges facing restaurants, along with those that strive to meet a triple bottom line:

• Profitability: As Judy notes, “Popular restaurants come and go in cities, and not many are around for a long time.” Recent downturns in the U.S. economy have been especially tough on the White Dog’s bottom line, and Judy worries how it will stay competitive: “We’re twenty-five years old, and there are so many new restaurants in town with flashy new decors and new ideas.” A new concern is rising food costs. Mindful of the restaurant’s mid-scale clientele, she observes, “Our prices are now up to twenty-five or thirty dollars an entrée, and we can’t really go any higher.”
  
  
• Balancing Three Bottom Lines: "Allocating resources is always a challenge—when there’s a good profit, how much should go to increasing employee benefits and profit-sharing, how much to community contributions, and how much for installing a solar hot water system or composting project?” Attention to people and planet means that the White Dog periodically skirts on the financial edge. 2008 was a tough year, and 2009 promises to be tougher still.
  
  
• The Double-Edges of Social Responsibility: One of the most painful experiences Judy had in her restaurant’s history involved a labor dispute during a sabbatical she had taken to write a book. “While I was gone, the servers organized because they felt the person I hired was too corporate, and they were afraid they would lose their excellent benefits, which are unheard of in this business.” Ultimately, the staff decided not to unionize, but the fight was costly. “It was heartbreaking. I couldn’t believe after all I’d done to have a model workplace... the servers organized against me.

That her “beautiful business” has been such an intimate part of Judy’s life has been both a strength and a weakness of the business. “It really requires an owner who is here all the time, who wants it to be her life. When it was my life, I enjoyed it for many years.” Now that it doesn’t consume so much of her life, she may enjoy it even more.