Hi everyone! It has been a couple months since our last update so this is a big one! We are getting into a wonderful rhythm and will be making posts more regularly moving forward. If you haven’t joined our community by sending us your email via the form on our Community & Events page read on to discover why you won’t want to miss out on our Newsletters!
Let’s Dig into the Updates!
Adjusted Hours
You may have noticed we adjusted our regular open hours earlier this week. Making this change is just one more step in streamlining in order to best serve you and continue to be able to do more than just serve amazing food. Breakfast has always been what we are known for, so we are opening a little earlier on the weekdays now, at 9AM seven days a week! Our Sunday night game nights have been a blast and we won’t be making any changes there, except that we will let you know we are working on a new trivia style game we plan to begin hosting on Sunday afternoons in the near future!
The hours we removed were based on not having the sales to be able to sustain them; our afternoons, like most restaurants, were quite slow between 2pm-4pm on the weekdays, and Saturday evenings have been lonely rather than active in the cafe. We are now closing at 2PM Monday – Saturday, which will allow us to expedite our creation and offering of unique events, along with making the space available for existing community groups seeking a space to meet, and individual parties or family gatherings.
We’re Officially Green!
As of last month, we are now a one star Certified Green Restaurant® and plenty more upgrades and changes are on the way – the more Green PointsTM we earn the more stars we gain! Reducing waste was one of our highest priorities in our reopening and we are excited to share with you that not only are we composting all food waste, diligently recycling all that is allowable, and have even been saving some items, like yogurt containers and produce plastic clam shells with the plan to find a useful or artistic future for them! We are carrying out a bag of trash to the dumpster less than once a week!
Reusable Container & Loyalty Programs
You probably know by now we encourage everyone to use reusable containers, but we have made some practical updates to our program, as we have had many reusable takeout containers go out the door but not very many coming back. We want to take the opportunity to let you know about how we have tied our reusable container program to our now Loyalty Program.
The Loyalty Program is directly tied via the Clover app to our online ordering, which is available all of our open hours. The app is free and available in the iOS and Android app stores. Simply download the Clover app, click on “Zest Garden Cafe” and “Check In” when you come in to see us. This allows us to attribute your purchase to your loyalty account where you receive 1 point for every dollar you spend. Online orders are automatically attributed to your loyalty account.
Points are currently redeemable as follows:
40 points – 12 oz French Press Coffee or Loose-leaf Tea on us!
75 points – Sweet Crepe on us!
150 points – Savory Crepe on us!
Redemption options may change at any time – and are always available to be viewed on the clover app under “Perks”!
How does this tie to our reusable container program? When you pay the $2 fee for the takeout containers you get the 2 loyalty points, and we will exchange 2 more loyalty points for clean reusable food and beverage containers brought in to us: for returning the ones we provided or others you may have around! More details to come soon on types of containers we use (like mason jars, coffee tumblers, and 8×8 tupperware or glass containers) but we will be offering 2 loyalty points per container you bring into us!
New Offerings: Raw Organic Juice & Online preorders!
We began offering raw organic juices this week, and after being inspired by one person calling to place a larger preorder, we are excited to announce we added a preorder form to the website Menu page today where you can order one of our four house flavors, or build your own juice blend!
We designed the form to work both for individuals to build their own cleanse OR for other restaurants or bars to create their own unique blend to offer in-house or mix into cocktails!
At the bottom of the form you will see you are also able to preorder our in-house Oat Milk, new Vegan Chocolate Milk, and more!
Join the Community!
Curious about details on the events we are creating?
Are you dying to know what the movies for our movie nights will be?
Would you enjoy first dibs on table reservations for movie nights?
How about VIP access to tickets to a Murder Mystery Dinner Party?
Want more details on our upcoming Traveling Tastes or Dig Deeper events?
To find out what we will be adding in the near future and have the opportunity to participate in the creation process, join our community by filling out the form on our Community & Event page with your email!
You can expect a monthly newsletter with behind the scenes details on future offerings, special invites to “test-runs” of event ideas, menu tastings, and more. PLUS we are going to offer our mailing list at least 24 hour private access to tickets and table reservations for events before the general public. Please keep in mind, we are a small venue and all of our events will only have 20-40 tickets available depending on the type of event, so we expect the more popular ones may sell out before the general public even hears about it!
We will be sending out our first monthly newsletter next week; you won’t want to miss it!
Click here to join the Community and get on the mailing list!