Greener Cooking: Sustainability Wins in Shared Kitchens

Sustainable commercial kitchen rental has become a strong tool in the push for a greener world over the last decade. Sharing resources has proven to be both more efficient and less expensive. 

All About Sharing

First and foremost, being a part of the shared kitchen community means, well, sharing. You are sharing equipment you would have purchased if you were operating your own restaurant. 

Rather than dozens of food businesses each purchasing and maintaining their own commercial-grade appliances, shared kitchens enable multiple tenants to access professional equipment on an as-needed basis. That sharing not only saves the resources it would have taken to manufacture a mixer or a range of your own, sharing with other chefs means that equipment is being used when it would have sat idle in a single-chef operation. 

Then there’s the overhead. Renting in a commercial kitchen facility means everyone is sharing the bill for utilities, trash removal, and everything else that goes along with owning or renting a commercial building. Just the centralized ventilation and HVAC systems can reduce energy consumption by 20-40%. 

Add the electricity use reductions with shared commercial refrigeration and lighting, and the individual chef’s carbon footprint continues to shrink. Both Partake Collective locations use LED lighting and motion-sensor lighting switches to reduce energy consumption. 

Reduce Food Waste

Sustainability involves more than saving energy. Currently, 30-40% of the food supply in the United States is wasted, and restaurants were responsible for 20% of the total food waste in 2023 – about 9.4 million tons. 

Shared kitchens directly address this problem on both sides of the cooking process. By collaborating with other chefs, the facility can address ingredient management and delivery. That can reduce both waste and cost. 

Organic waste diversion has become an emphasis over the last several years because organic material generates methane – a potent greenhouse gas – when dumped in landfills to decompose. In California, it is now required to separate organic material and divert it from regular trash disposal. 

Shared kitchens address this issue directly, with centralized waste disposal. Partake provides the necessary green bins in each kitchen, and arranges for the proper pickup. 

Partake also tries to help limit what becomes waste. In Long Beach, we work with Go Go Grocery to keep produce items available so chefs can handle last-minute needs without keeping produce around that then goes bad when it isn’t needed. 

Precious Water

Go into most stand-alone restaurant kitchens, and you’ll see sinks with running water to rinse dishes, cutlery and more before they go into a dishwashing machine – which can also be running almost constantly during business hours. That’s literally water down the drain. 

Add all the water set on dining tables that must be poured out when patrons don’t drink it; urns of coffee dumped out to make fresh pots; and those mop buckets for cleanup. The water use at a restaurant is a real factor in cost and sustainability. 

Sharing sinks and dishwashers to clean pots and pans is a big water saver at commercial kitchens. The most efficient commercial dishwashers can save up to 50% more water than most of those found in restaurants. Large facilities like Partake can scale up water conservation efforts, and take care of infrastructure when issues like leaks occur. 

When it comes to sustainability, delivery and pickup-only operations are much more efficient than stand-alone restaurants. Eliminating the front-of-house serving area saves everything from water to electricity. 

Still, there is satisfaction to watching customers enjoy your fare. Partake Collective offers that experience as well, with a food hall and/or space for a pop-up operation. Again, using the resource only when you need it saves in several ways. 

Containers for Customers

Operating a delivery-only or retail product business entails packaging your product.  

To-go containers have been problematic for years when it comes to sustainability – plastic is an issue and polystyrene has become a pariah in environmental circles. Paper and paperboard are biodegradable (eventually) but can fail as containers if the food is held for too long. 

Reusable containers can offer a solution, and one of Partake Long Beach’s tenants is hard at work to make them viable. Tiptoe Sustainability operated by Will Bravante has been providing reusable containers for healthcare products since June 2024, and is expanding to food containers – including partnering with some of his fellow Partake tenants. 

“I try to be comparable (in price) to disposable containers,” Will said. “The trick is to get the containers returned. We’re trying a rebate approach – regular customers will set their used containers out to be picked up when the next order arrives.” 

Will uses his space at Partake primarily to clean and refill containers. Water waste is managed with better equipment than he would have access to otherwise, and overhead costs are lower.  

The bigger advantage is the network he has established with the chefs working there, he added. 

“I just love the people there,” Will said. “It’s really a Partake partners network. I’m really hoping to grow as they grow, steadily and organically.” 

Sustainability is a core value here at Partake Collective. Come tour either Partake location to see what I mean. Partake Long Beach is at 456 Elm Ave. Partake Los Angeles (Glassell Park) is at 3716 Eagle Rock Blvd. To book a tour, go to partakecollective.com/book-a-tour. 

© Partake Collective 2025