You may not be familiar with ROC United (Restaurant Opportunities Center), but you’re no doubt familiar with the ideas of a fair wage, working conditions and just treatment on the job. Bartertown is honored to be part of ROC United’s 2013 National Diner’s Guide to Ethical Eating for exemplifying these principles.

Check out the “ROC High Road Restaurants” in the list below and find us and the other Michigan eateries that made the cut.

ROC-DINERS-GUIDE-2013

When our new menu debuts Wednesday, you’ll notice a few changes, a few additions, and a few standards we wouldn’t dare mess with.

To start the day off, the Direct Trade Coffee Club coffee we get is now available for $2 a cup, after tax. We’ve talked to the people at DTCC and feel that offering coffee by the cup is best for everyone involved. Those who only want a cup won’t have to pay $3, there will be less waste, and we’ll still be able to offer excellent, fairly sourced coffee directly from farms we can build relationships with.

For smaller bites, we’re bringing back a sauteed greens appetizer. Collard greens are sauteed with grilled onions and tempeh sausage and drizzled with a cajun spiced aioli for $8.

On the sandwich menu, our new breakfasty sandwich is called the Johann Sebrunchtian Bach, and comes with jalapeno peanut butter, a seasonal jam, tofu omelette, tempeh bacon, and dairy or vegan cheese on Little Rooster’s wild rice and onion bread. The Pretzeldential Sweet has marinated tempeh, caramelized onions, creamy coleslaw, vegan havarti cheese spread, and sweet BBQ sauce on a homemade pretzel bun. The Havin’a Panini comes with sweet and smoky marinated tofu, pickled root veggies, vegan cheese and homemade mustard on a hoagie bun with a side of Cuban style black beans. And on the side of all our sandwiches, you get Garden of Eatin’ blue corn tortilla chips (unless you’d like to upgrade to a featured daily side for $1).

You can also count on favorites like the Chickpea Melt, the Michigander, Tofu Rancheros and $2 Tacos sticking around for a while. There will be more raw plate specials showing up on our board, too, now that more fresh veggies are becoming available from our local farms.

We really hope you enjoy all the new items we’ve come up with, just as much as the old standbys. Lunch hours are 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, and we’re extending brunch to 3 p.m. on Saturdays, so expect changes to that menu in the near future, too!

Hello workers of the world!

May Day is a special day for us at Bartertown, as it is for many other worker-run establishments and IWW associated groups across the globe. As such, we will not be open tomorrow In observance of this holiday. We are grateful for all your continued support and hope that you can pass on the love to other workers you meet along the way tomorrow, too. We will see you all Thursday, and Workers of the World Unite!

Do you know what you’re eating?

Do you know how it was prepared?

Do you know where to get those ingredients yourself?

These aren’t questions we expect every guest to be asking when they eat at Bartertown Diner, but they are easily answered. Food education has always been a main focus at Bartertown, and some of our workers are extending that focus beyond the dining room.

Collective member Matt “Dubs” Wrobleski, has been hosting “Cooking with a Bartertown Chef” classes at 6 p.m. Sundays at Tree Huggers, located at 947 Wealthy St. SE, for a few months now. More recently, Dubs has been holding similar classes at the Seventh Day Adventist Church, located at 100 Sheldon Blvd. SE.

“No fees, no sign up.  Just show up, watch, learn, snack, ask me anything, offer to buy me a beer or a food truck,” he said. “They’re pretty casual. Classes at the Adventist church are more of a here and there thing, though I’m working towards making them more consistent.”

Dubs’ main focus in each of these classes is to show how simple and efficient eating a plant-based diet can be, along with eliminating the ideas that a vegan diet requires a lot of work or that only rich people can afford it.

“When I was jobless, I survived off of potatoes, onions, rice, and beans,” he said. “I had to budget.”

But even those with gainful employment can appreciate the benefits of anchoring meals with basic mainstays.

“…like making meatballs or burgers out of a grain, a bean, a binder, and flavor. Or cheese sauces made from oats, wheat flour, and sunflower seeds,” he said.

Eating healthfully is important, too. And when it comes to nutrition, Dubs maintains that sprouted grains have a lot to offer. He has led demonstrations in sprouting everything from garbanzo beans, to lentils, to quinoa.

“I recently did a demo in long sprouted wheat and we got into an open discussion about its versatility,” he said. “You can take that sprouted grain and eat it as is, or you could grow it into wheat grass and use it in smoothies or feed it to your cat. You could dehydrate it at 104 degrees and grind it into sprouted flour. You can even submerse it in water and make a ferment called rejuvelac.”

Kombucha tea is growing in popularity, and often sells out quite fast in the diner’s front deli case. Dubs has held one kombucha class in the past that he intends to expand into multiple workshops, providing attendees a SCOBY for starting cultures of their own.

The classes Dubs has led and those he and other collective members have planned for the future aren’t aimed at scaring up any business for the restaurant, selling you some sort of product, or playing off your emotions to encourage veganism, although most of the products used are available within Tree Huggers, harvested from local farms, and used in dishes at Bartertown. The main goal is to educate people on food and turn them on to the benefits of an efficient, plant-based diet, purely through rational demonstration.

“We have approached a point in mankind’s development where we have to switch to a more efficient method of resource consumption,” Dubs said. “It’s about humanity as a whole, whether you love animals or not. On the personal level, learning to cook a vegan diet will give you a better understanding of food, and how little you need if you prepare it in a fashion that maximizes nutrition.”

Of course, saving money, time and the earth’s resources aren’t the only benefits with this sort of diet.

“You are limiting or eliminating your risk of dying from a number of degenerative diseases,” Dubs said. “Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc… plus all these other problems developing as we slowly slip away from nature.”

It was Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, who once entertained the idea to let food be thy medicine. Dubs maintains that this opinion works both ways: treat your food with care and knowledge, and it will offer the same to you.

For more information, keep an eye on our Facebook page, as well as Tree Huggers‘.

Not only will you get a delicious deal by buying one of these 30-meal punch cards (good for one entree a day, 30 times, between Jan. 1 and April 31, 2013), you’ll help us make some improvements to the diner, and expand next door with Bread Square Bakery! We’ll be opening West Michigan’s first all-vegan bakery, from which you can expect to see breads, cookies, cakes, pies, pastries, baking classes, cookie of the month clubs, a cookbook and more. These punch cards go on sale today for the usual price of $150 each. We will be selling them until New Years Eve, so snag one for yourself, for a gift for someone else, or for the BEST RESOLUTION EVER!

Expect to see more perks for Bread Square being offered soon, but in the mean time, get your punch card and come eat some of the best tasting, most healthful and cruelty free food Michigan has to offer!

We’re going to be closed Monday, Oct. 8. Art Prize really pushed us to the limit and, although we are so happy to have been so busy the last few weeks, we are exhausted and we’ll be taking Monday off to recuperate and stock up on some essential supplies.

See you Tuesday!