Exciting news coming from Daily Planet Coffee Company, the café and coffee shop located on Hertel Avenue is getting a top to bottom refresh, which will reboot almost every aspect of their business from food and coffee, to in-house events, including a renewed focus on their eco-footprint.
“Daily Planet was founded on the idea that people have a responsibility to do something nice for the planet, daily,” said owner, Mike Caputi in a statement. “For the past four years Daily Planet Coffee has demonstrated its mission by serving responsibly grown coffees and teas, recycling, composting, providing healthy vegan, vegetarian, and organic food and beverage options, supporting the local art and music community, and partnering with local non-profits.”
That’s when they asked themselves, how can we do better? The answer was clear, “take it to the next level,” says Caputi.
In addition to their locally roasted coffees, they will now serve Café Justo which is a grower owned coffee cooperative based in Chiapas, Mexico, formed to address the poverty and migration from Mexico to the U.S.A.
Daily Planet also partnered with Chef David Chriswell to develop a new menu featuring using farm-to-table produce and meats. With more organic and vegan options, including quinoa bowls and roasted veggie wraps, there are endless soul nourishing choices, all of which you can feel good about eating.
From their inception, Daily Planet has been strongly committed to maintaining a small eco-footprint. Some steps they have taken have been to reduce food waste through composting efforts with Farmer Pirates. They also took a deep look in to the serving products they were using, “we have used recycled and recyclable paper products since opening, but now we are offering bowls and dishes made completely from palm leaves as well as compostable straws and coffee cup lids.” Straw lovers rejoice!
Much research was done into every product that is being used. The palm leaf bowls, for example, have no negative impact on their source trees. The palm leaves are hand gathered from the ground around the trees, washed, steamed, put into a mold, and air dried. No chemicals have been applied. This makes every bowl look a bit different. Not only do the creation of these bowls have a position impact on their local economy, but it’s taking a natural product that would go to waste, and re using it. After use, the bowls will be composted to live out their natural life-cycle.
As if that weren’t enough, they are launching an event series aimed at bringing our community closer together. Daily Chatter, is a bi-weekly event and speaker series, planned by a new event planning partnership with RAV. Since Daily Planet’s launch four years ago, they have hosted over 21 fundraisers for community-based organizations and non-profits like Hope Rises, Ride for Roswell, Rock Autism, and WNY Heroes. “These events have proven quite successful in raising support and awareness to wonderful organizations that help those in need and make WNY a better place,” added Caputi.
If you are anxious to experience Daily Planet for yourself – you don’t have long to wait. They will re-open on Friday, August 24th.
Daily Planet Coffee Company | 1862 Hertel Avenue | Buffalo, New York | (716) 551-0661 | Facebook | Website
Lead image credit: Chris Lorek