Launching a Sustainable Chef Wear Brand
In my last post, I took on the sustainability challenge of becoming a girls’ basketball coach. Unfortunately, because of Covid, many schools have put all extra-curricular activities on hold until the next school year, so this challenge will have to be part of a later chapter.
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Separately, however, my partner and I have started our own purpose-driven business. Aiming to merge our expertise (him an Executive Chef and me a Sustainability Advisor), we’ve launched Cavalry — an apparel brand that makes more sustainable chef wear, such as chef coats, aprons, tees, etc. I won’t dive into the full story of the meaning behind Cavalry (click here to read that), rather I’ll discuss through my journey so far and what lies ahead.
It’s been about two months since we registered the business, and while we are not in business yet, the journey has been incredibly eye-opening already! So far, the main challenges I’ve been facing include relating our purpose to an audience whose focus is on food, not clothes, balancing sustainability with other business decisions and navigating through the weeds of the textile supply chain.
Care for food, care for clothes
There’s been an uptake in restaurants in Hong Kong incorporating more sustainable choices on their menu, such as plant-based dishes or locally sourced ingredients. And while chefs are busy caring for their food, we want to help them care for their clothes.
Understanding our audience — hardworking chefs who work 10+ hours a day in a hot kitchen and while earning Michelin Stars, still eat standing over a trash can — we knew that our brand had to speak to a diverse and down-to-earth group of individuals who respect high quality craftsmanship. Trying to force sustainability education into 1,000 word articles with complex Googleable terms will not hold attentions or resonate.
Our focus is on embedding sustainability into kitchen culture. This means finding ways to inject episodic or snapshots on social media channels of why it’s important to know what their clothes are made of how they’re made. Recently, we sent a survey out to chefs to understand what factors strongly effect their purchasing decisions, and the number one and two factors were comfort and fit (95%) and quality (81%). Things like “product is ethically made” and “product is made from environmentally friendly materials” proved to be less critical, but rather a nice-to-have feature.
Translating these results into business decisions means that comfort and fit and quality need to be a top priority (which may mean more budget allocation during the sampling phase), as getting these right will win over customers’ trust. And while we will establish environmental and ethical standards, certain sustainability decisions may need to take a temporary backseat as we build our brand equity.
Defining “sustainable”
We started this journey knowing that we will not be able to be 100% sustainable, but we are 100% trying to be.
Everything we make has an impact on the environment
Becoming more sustainable starts at the design stage, with understanding the best materials to use for a longer lasting and more durable product.
Design stage considerations include the use of natural materials over synthetics, overall desired quality and longevity of the garment over multiple wears and washes. A few of our principles around materials are:
- When possible, we will choose natural over synthetic fabrics. A chef coat needs to be washed on a weekly basis (often times more), meaning using synthetic fabrics would result in thousands to millions of shed microplastics from one product lifespan
- When feasible, we will choose organic over non-organic fabrics. This means fibres like cotton or hemp is grown without the use of pesticides or chemical toxins and with less water and energy. While there are considerable arguments against using organic, such as the need for more land to grow and therefore produces less overall yield per same area as non-organic fibres, we put more emphasis on the fact that we will receive a less toxic fabric for our customers. There are, however, high quality non-organic natural fabrics that we will consider simply because this means the garment will be more resilient to washing and deformities, elongating its lifespan
- Choosing fabrics that are produced in a safe environment that poses no harm to workers. For example, there is an alternative to bleaching that poses less harm to the environment if the chemicals were to get through the waterways, but is incredibly harmful to workers if they were to come into direct contact with the chemical. The likelihood of the latter happening is much greater than the former. In this situation, we would choose to continue using bleach while searching for other alternatives
In addition to materials, other considerations at the design stage — such as fit, functionality, how the garment will be worn and cared for and how it will be disposed of — are critical to determining longevity and reusability. The first two factors are more controllable from our side, whereas the last two are more dependent on customer behaviour and availability of recycling services, technology and local infrastructure.
Breaking through an opaque supply chain
Diving into the textile supply chain without having any existing connections is like jumping into a swimming pool not knowing if it’s filled or empty. Luckily, due to the nature of my role as a Sustainability Advisor, I had a few contacts that have been of tremendous help in introducing me to people with supply chain experience and even a fair trade manufacturer with whom we will be working with.
From all the learning curves (and there have been many), the top three have been:
- Piecing together all of the different players that it takes to make a single chef coat, understanding where and how each piece is made and the costs associated
For example, the raw material might be sourced from India, with the manufacturer in China and if a certain treatment or finish is desired, then this might entail sending the garments to a chemical solutions factory. If you’re lucky, you may find a vertically integrated factory that has existing partnerships with different suppliers and will take care of everything and you end up with a finished product. However, it’s not that simple for small brands who cannot afford high order quantities, which is typically the standard for larger vertically integrated factories. And on top of that, it gets more complicated if sustainability is factored in because that further narrows the potential partner pool.
For one of our chef coat designs, we are hoping to have small batches locally made in Hong Kong by experienced seamstresses rather than a large factory, but this means we need to source all of the fabrics, buttons and trimmings ourselves — as well as the brand label, care label and hangtags. Furthermore, the cost of labour in Hong Kong is about twice the price compared to other Asian countries such as China, Vietnam or Sri Lanka. So while we would ideally like to have garments locally made, feasibility will play a big role in our final decision
2. Wrapping my head around all of the sustainability certifications
There are HUNDREDS of certifications, each with their own merit and specific areas of focus — and each with their own industry critiques. It’s not just about understanding and remembering different certifications, but translating their definitions into communication with future customers and relevancy with our brand.
For example, the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) an internationally recognised organic textile standard. The standard covers the processing, manufacturing, packaging, labelling, trading and distribution of all textiles made from at least 70% certified organic natural fibres. That’s great and all, but why would chefs care? What does that actually mean? Who is this standard helping? The challenge is answer all of these questions in short and concise ways that can be communicated via social media and product packaging.
In terms of brand relevancy, there needs to be consistent alignment with our beliefs. If we believe in the “taking care of family” mentality of kitchen culture, then ethical certifications may need to take priority over a GOTS or something of the like. In a perfect world, you can find partners that have both, but in reality you’re lucky to find partners that check one of the boxes who also have low minimum order quantities and are economically sustainable.
3. Figuring out how to address the garment’s end-of-life and disposal method
The difficulty here is that in Hong Kong, the technology to be able to feasibly recycle clothes does not yet exist. There are organisations who can recycle certain clothes back into knitted fabric, but they will only do this if there is demand to buy back the recycled fabric. The issue for us is that chef coats use woven fabric rather than knitted — and therefore, we would not meet the demand needed to recycle our garments in the first place. Another option we looked at was to find a recycling partner in China as there are companies who can provide this service. However, a few issues included: 1) a very heavy waste tax due to China’s National Sword Policy banning most waste imports and 2) quality control issues.
An alternative we considered was commercially composting the chef coats (as long as they are made of organic natural fibres such as hemp or cotton). However, after exchanging emails with the Environmental Protection Department of Hong Kong , I was informed that the commercial compost facility would only work for food and not fabrics. Home compost is also not a realistic option as most people have tiny apartments with no space for home composting.
The other difficulty with chef coats is that typically at its end-of-life stage it is truly at its end-of-life, and not because it’s gone out of style. Therefore, a chef coat is not really able to be donated or given away as second hand clothing.
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Since starting this post, we have confirmed partnership with an ethical manufacturer to make our first chef coat design. These will be made using 100% fair trade cotton and produced with traditional handlooms by women in rural villages in Sri Lanka. Until the next post!
