By Natasha Collishaw
Centretown restaurant owner Ozlem Balpinar never liked drinking bottled water.
“I thought about the water sitting on the shelf at the grocery store for who knows how long,” she said. “It turned me off.”
Last spring, Balpinar, the owner of the Oz Kafe on Elgin Street decided to turn off the tap on bottled water sales at her restaurant.
She sold Perrier for $2.50 a bottle. Perrier, which is imported from France, was the only bottled water on the menu.
She joins a movement by many upscale restaurants in New York and San Francisco that seeks to ban the bottles in order to the lessen the environmental impact.
The Oz Kafe specializes in fresh Mediterranean food, and her menu changes with the seasons in order that she can buy locally as much as possible.
“I realized that it was a contradiction to sell bottled water from France when I talk all the time about supporting local industry,” she said.
Balpinar says she may lose a little bit of money from the decision, although she is unsure of how much. Previously she would buy a pack of water bottles and mark up the price 50 per cent.
But she said that it is worth any loss of income because she is contributing to the preservation of the environment.
“Every little bit helps, if you are able to cut back on something, it may make a difference,” she said.
The Oz Kafe’s customers support her decision, Balpinar said. And her commitment to the environment may even be attracting a new, socially conscious clientele.
“I’ve had people say that they have come to eat at the restaurant because they heard that I’d banned bottled water,” she said.
Down the street at Bridgehead, an Ottawa coffee chain, the employees know the business value of contributing to the environment.
“People tell us that the reason they come here is because our coffee is organic, shade-grown and fair trade,” said Steve Gendron, an employee at the cafe.
While Bridgehead continues to sell bottled water, the bottles are made from an organic, corn-based material, so they are biodegradable. However, many clients prefer to drink the citrus-flavoured available for free in the store.
“I never drink bottled water here,” said Bridgehead regular Sue Featherstone, “There’s no reason to when you have free water at the front.”
So far, the Oz Kafe appears to be the only restaurant on Elgin Street to remove bottled water from its menu. A survey of nearby bars and restaurants indicates that many of them do not sell bottled water because of lack of space and lack of demand.
In the future, Balpinar hopes other restaurants will follow her example. She says her neighbours do not need to worry about upsetting customers since most of her clients do not even notice that the bottled water is absent.
Diana Kwan, who comes occasionally to the Oz Kafe, is one such client. She says that she supports Balpinar’s decision.
“Ottawa’s tap water is just fine,” she said.
Veronique Savoia, another customer, said that she was surprised by the decision, but observed, “It’s her choice.”
While Balpinar tries to include mostly local items on her menu, she does sell imported products such as Tropicana orange juice. She buys the juices in plastic tubes of concentrated syrup, which is then diluted with tap water.