Originally published June 30 2005
Businesses in the Twin Cities profit while respecting nature
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Seven Twin Cities entrepreneurs who recently started businesses – or revamped existing ones – are running on clean energy, owned by employees, use organic food from local growers and help Third-World farmers support themselves.
Sure, the gimmick helped Galactic Pizza stick out in the crowd of style-conscious Lyn-Lake eateries.
It's the fact that Galactic Pizza creates a product using organic ingredients in a largely sustainable facility, all to benefit the neighborhood.
After graduating from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000, Apple Valley native Pete Bonahoom began a career in the financial industry, working for Piper Jaffray.
In a matter of months, he became frustrated and stepped back to reassess his goals.
He wanted to create a pizzeria that was both profitable and principled.
And he wanted it to be fun.
So Bonahoom combined his personal savings with a loan from the Small Business Administration and got the gears rolling on Galactic Pizza.
The Galactic relationship with the community starts long before the piping-hot Paul Bunyan pizza (a wild rice, morel mushroom, bison sausage concoction) arrives at a customer's door, and goes on beyond that transaction.
For every Galactic Pizza ordered, $1 from the sale goes to the Second Harvest hunger relief organization.
Five percent of after-tax profits are donated to charity.
In developing his business plan, Bonahoom firmly established that he would seek alternative energy sources for his store.
Galactic Pizza then arranged to pay extra for 100-percent wind-powered electricity, purchased a stable of cars that run solely on that electricity, and found pizza products that are organic or growth-hormone free (Chippewa Valley cheese is used on most non-vegan Galactic pies).
The biggest obstacle keeping Galactic Pizza from total sustainability, however, is that the ovens run on natural gas.
It takes people making a sacrifice first. Bonahoom echoes the sentiments of other environmental business advocates: as long as private commercial entities are satisfied with the status quo, there's no demand for progressive materials and energy sources.
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