Michael Bauer: Get your free water at Millennium

May 19, 2009

My blog post last week about Millennium offering only filtered water at a charge

of $1 brought a lot of responses.

The restaurant has rethought its approach. I received this message from General

Manager Erica Culp.

In the nearly 15 years Millennium has been in business, we've endeavored to try

and bring vegan cuisine to a new level in the public consciousness and to do

well by doing good. Most recently, we chose to end our practice of offering

bottled water for a price and substituted this with a Natura filtered system

with unlimited water available to the guests for $1.

The vast majority of our customers have appreciated this switch, but it's clear

from your recent blog and the responses to it that it makes sense to offer our

guests a choice if they want just good old Hetch Hetchy tap water for no cost.

As with any restaurant, we're in the customer service business so the last thing

we want is to be perceived as being insensitive to the wishes of many of our

patrons.

So starting immediately, we will offer our customers a choice of filtered water

for $1 versus tap, but we will not be going back to offering bottled water, as

we think that any environmentally-conscious restaurant would be working against

its principles in doing so.

Obviously, Millinneum strives to be socially responsible, and I applaud anyplace

that eliminates bottled water. Even before all the environmental uproar, I

thought it was an unnecessary expense for the consumer.

However, I realize it was also a profit center for restaurants, so those who do

quit selling it truly are motivated by the greater good.

Posted By: Michael Bauer (Email) | May 18 2009 at 05:10 AM

* * * * *

In addition to free tap water, card-carrying SFVS members receive 10% discount

at

Millennium Restaurant 580 Geary Blvd/Jones St., SF 94102, 415-345-3900

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