You don’t have to look far to see that Brother Bear Wholefood Cafe lives and breathes sustainability. Situated in the Mount Barker district of South Australia, this Responsible Cafe has phased out single use cups, their coffee grinds kept in buckets for locals to collect for their gardens, green waste is being repurposed and to top it all off, they even have a battery recycling box and book exchange!
“We only have one planet! And we are rapidly filling it with our waste”, Jess the owner of Brother Bear said. “As business owners I feel we have a responsibility to lead the way.”
The family run cafe has definitely led by example by phasing out single use cups and you can see the necessity with an estimated 2,700,000 coffee cups disposed of by Australians every single day.
Luckily, Jess has found most of their customers were extremely supportive. “It’s a daily conversation that we will probably have to have until it becomes the norm. Sometimes this can be challenging. But we gently educate and plant seeds and also understand that everyone is doing the best they can.”
Their menu is full of plant based and locally farmed produce that after reading, would leave anyone drooling. But Brother Bear is not just a cafe but a home away from home, a family run business where mama bear, papa bear and sister all have their own love and care about their actions.
When talking about reducing waste Jess said that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, “every tiny effort makes a difference because we are in this together.”