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White Dog Cafe Summary
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US: White Dog www.whitedog.com
For 25 years a brownstone across the street from the University of Pennsylvania Law School has doubled as Judy Wicks’ home and restaurant, White Dog Café. Serving affordably priced, locally sourced food to a booming clientele allowed her expand to Black Cat, a retail operation that sells locally-made and fair trade gifts, and the nonprofit White Dog Community Enterprises. She views the White Dog not just as a restaurant but as a platform for social change. “I think that the type of programming we do—more and more focusing on local food, sustainability forums, corn dinners, sustainable fish dinners—are educating on what I feel are the crucial issues of our time. We do farm tours, solar house tours, water conservation workshops—these are the things that people need to know. That has become part of our product along with food and service.”
She balances her business with the three P's: profit, people, and planet. “When I have a good year profit-wise, I try to figure out how to make business more socially sustainable... like offering benefits and healthcare and 401(k)s to our servers.” Her ingredients have become increasingly more localized: teaching through taste the importance of consuming local food, diners learn about the fair trade cocoa and coffee they’re drinking, and the White Dog even operates on 100% regional wind power.
Last year, she sold her business to another local entrepreneur so she could focus on White Dog Community Enterprises which recently merged with the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, a local network of the international Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.
