Finding Green in Sustainability: Pita Jungle

Pita Jungle's story: Bassel Osmani, Nelly Kohsok, and Fouad Khodr founded Pita Jungle, a fast-casual restaurant chain that offers healthy options, in 1994. The company has grown from three employees at launch to more than 600 workers at 13 locations in the southwestern United States.  Most restaurant operations are known for producing tremendous amounts of waste and using large amounts of energy, but Pita Jungle's founders have managed to reduce the environmental impact of their restaurants by creating and executing a sustainability plan. What led you to implement a sustainability plan? The reasons to implement a sustainability plan are twofold. 1) Ethical: it is the right and responsible thing to do. 2) Customer satisfaction: our customers appreciate it, and as a result of that appreciation, engaging in sustainability efforts rewards us with positive branding and marketing benefits. These measures are taken with a strong emphasis on trying to decouple our economic growth from environmental degradation related to our restaurants.