Sustainable Events Can Be Luxurious (and Vice Versa)
- Christy Johnson
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
By Christy Johnson
There's a myth that has floated around the catering and events industry for, well, forever, that sustainable celebrations are a compromise. Or they’re too expensive or difficult to pull off. Or that going "green" means going without elegance or indulgence.
But Chowgirls has worked to shatter that myth, one locally sourced, delicious bite at a time.
We've spent the past 22 years proving that sustainability and luxury aren't mutually exclusive. Perhaps the best way we explicitly showcase this concept is with Cultivate, a two-day summit we've hosted with LUUM Collective for the past four years. At the most recent gathering in April at The Whim, 120 invited guests got to taste and experience just how polished a sustainable event can be through NA wine and vegan cheese pairings, a seasonal sourcing art exhibit, and an expert-led discussion on designing and managing low-waste gatherings.
LOCAL FOOD IS BETTER FOOD
Chowgirls understands that the foundation of any catered event begins with the ingredients. The best-tasting food is not trucked in from hundreds of miles away. Nor is it loaded with questionable preservatives to keep it from spoiling during its long journey and, sometimes, lengthy stay in a refrigerated warehouse. Instead, it's sourced from farms you know and trust, picked at peak season, and prepared from scratch by people, like our chefs, who care deeply about what they're making.
On average, more than half of Chowgirls' ingredients are sourced from credible farms and purveyors from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, which not only supports our local and regional economies, but also reduces our carbon footprint. And for much of our freshly picked garnishes that adorn everything from our entrées to our cocktails, we only have to step a few feet into the backyard garden we planted a few years ago at our headquarters in Northeast Minneapolis.
There are also times when we want to add color to a menu item — whether it's to help tell a story, provide visual interest, or support a party's theme. We avoid using artificial additives or synthetic dyes as much as possible and are consistently testing new solutions that are sustainable, beautiful, and repeatable. But most often, nature offers us everything we need: beet peels can turn ingredients a gorgeous, deep pink; cabbage cores produce a surprising blue; and onion skins or turmeric lend some foods a golden yellow tint. We think the colors are more interesting than what you can get from a bottle, and the story behind them leads to fantastic dinner conversation.
THE DETAILS MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Luxurious events all come down to the details. And details are one of the cornerstones of our Concepts event design services. Our team loves brainstorming with visionary clients on everything from floral design to custom menus, luxury tablescapes to interactive experiences. Whatever you dream up, we work within your theme to create high-touch and memorable celebrations.
Some of the most impressive moments we've conceived have emerged from the framework of circular thinking. Part of that means asking ourselves, what can we do with what we already have?
For the first time this year at Cultivate, we hosted a styled dinner called Art of the After Party for 32 planners and creatives in the hospitality industry. Here, every element was intentionally designed with its afterlife in mind. For instance, each of the five courses contained a menu item that incorporated a discarded element from the previous course, like the carrot tartare, which was served in a citrus-rind bowl, the segments from which had just adorned a chicory salad. It was the perfect example of how, with little to no extra work on our chefs' part, the "waste" from one menu item became a beautiful vessel for another.
At other Concepts-led events, the Chowgirls team sanitized oyster shells and then lined the inside surfaces with a swirled combination of white chocolate, blue spirulina, and cocoa powder to create an edible barrier upon which we served a chocolate truffle. Hollowed-out citrus peels have become vessels for hand-poured candles. And one of our favorite ways to serve canapés is to place them on salvaged tiles from Mercury Mosaics' "misfire" section — which can't be sold commercially — and arrange them on a table in a checkerboard pattern.
The tiles have been "a really great way to create a striking visual moment" that guests photograph and talk about both during the festivities as well as online afterward, says Annie Pennings Edmond, Chowgirls' event design & sustainability manager.
According to The Weather Channel, the average six-hour wedding in the U.S. can generate 400–600 pounds of trash, much of it coming from single-use items. To combat this, we incorporate compostable, recyclable, or reusable materials — like high-quality, versatile wares that last for years — whenever possible instead of relying on plastic.
None of these are sustainability compromises. They are either practical or design choices that are also earth-friendly.
THE BEAUTY OF INTENTIONALITY
Sustainable luxury extends well beyond the food and how we serve it. When an event includes floral elements, we use only locally sourced, seasonally selected blooms and eschew floral foam because of the toxic chemicals and microplastics it contains.
Even when we're not taking on the floral décor ourselves at an event, we love working alongside similarly minded teams. While planning the Art of the After Party dinner, Pennings Edmond shared our Concepts team's aesthetic vision with MAVEN, a Cultivate sponsor and the stylists tasked with designing the tables' centerpieces. The MAVEN team took our direction and created arrangements composed completely of invasive species, thus turning an ecological problem into unforgettable art. Since the assemblages were dried, they can be stored and used again at future events.
We feel these design decisions are superior to those that have become "expected" at high-end gatherings, like balloon arches and cheap decorations sourced from big-box stores and online marketplaces like Amazon. But when you remove this excess, these things that get thrown away immediately after guests leave, you're left with a more considered and, therefore, meaningful event.
Since the beginning, Chowgirls has gone far above simply placing a recycling bin in the corner of a venue. But at Cultivate, we took our standard multi-bin sorting system one step further to show attendees the impact events can have on the earth and what we can do to lessen the damage.
We placed clear waste-sorting stations on display as an exhibition, and guests could visibly witness them change over the course of the day. The mundane act of tossing a compostable cup into its correct bin turned into something guests were genuinely engaged with because they could instantly see both the consequences of their actions and the actual amount of things that get discarded at an event this size.
It was the perfect example of Chowgirls' philosophy when it comes to waste sorting: "It’s another bin, not another step." Sustainability doesn’t have to be a burden on guests or planners. It can be done in a way that looks considered, or it can even become an experience in itself.
Take-home bags are another feature often seen at posh celebrations, and Art of the After Party showed how they can be done with care. Chowgirls tapped event sponsor and frequent collaborator Lara Cornell to hand-dip 100% cotton totes with dyes made from food waste, and the bags were then filled with gifts like beeswax candles from Slow Burn and French macarons made by our talented pastry chefs.
What took these treats to the next level, though? They were kept safe inside cute boxes that were crafted out of handmade paper. Yes, handmade paper! Isabel Clayter, our Concepts event design assistant, painstakingly fabricated each sheet from our office's paper shredder scraps, food waste, and water, and then, one by one, dried it over a form our facilities manager made with his 3D printer. It doesn't get much more intentional, sustainable, and luxurious than that.
But we didn't stop there. A local company, Down For Good, donated fabric to us, which was transformed into the napkins we provided to diners at Art of the After Party. Guests were encouraged to take them home to either use in their current form or as a bandana. And when the napkins reach the end of their lifecycle, they can be composted because they, like the tote bags, are made from 100% cotton.
At other Concepts-based events, Chowgirls has helped clients add a chic touch to their events with an edible art canvas. Guests help themselves, via crostini, pita bites, or crackers, to a surface that's been stylishly painted with hummus and other naturally dyed spreads. We make the canvases food-safe by coating them with a blend of paraffin and beeswax, which means when an event is over, they can be washed and reused in the same manner.
Special details like these have become so popular with our clients that we've even coined a term for them: SnacktivitiesTM. Think of these installations and immersive moments like edible entertainment. They not only engage, surprise, and impress guests, but also invite them to participate.
HOW TO PLAN A SUSTAINABLE EVENT
For informed caterers, event planners, and venue owners, these aren't "out there" ideas. Sustainability is becoming an expectation, particularly for some corporate clients, younger couples, and organizations that care about the impact they have on the environment. Being proactive now, rather than reactive later, is a competitive advantage.
In the two-plus decades Chowgirls has been in business, we've received a great deal of recognition in our field for the ways we're helping protect the planet. In March we earned two prestigious awards: the International Live Events Association Minneapolis–St. Paul Chapter's (ILEA-MSP) Star Award for Best Sustainability Effort, and an ACE Award from Cater + Event (previously Catersource) for Sustainability in Catering — both in honor of the 2025 edition of Cultivate. It's been exciting to partner with more planners and venues that are increasingly interested in sustainability, not only as an obligation, but also as a differentiator.
It seems the guests are paying more attention now, too. They ask about the mosaic tiles, naturally dyed eggs, and oyster shells that have all been given a second life, and they take photos and share their experiences on social media. We think that's what makes a great event. One in which attendees not only enjoy delicious food, but they also create memories and maybe learn something, too.
So, if you're ready to make your luxurious events more sustainable (or vice versa!), you don't need to overhaul your entire approach overnight. Start small, like with your takeaway gifts. Swap a branded pen that'll end up in a guest's junk drawer for a consumable item, like a cookie in a compostable bag, or something genuinely useful, like 100% cotton bandanas that double as napkins.
Pennings Edmond recommends letting creativity be your guide. "When you see an event where everything was ordered on Amazon, I feel like, yes, that's fast and easy, but it doesn't have the same quality and care as a sustainable event," she says.
From there, consider the vendors from which you're sourcing the food. Is there a local farm or cheese maker you could highlight on the menu instead of one from a national brand? Experts are already ringing the alarm bell that if we go on ignoring climate change, products like coffee and chocolate will go extinct in our lifetimes. That worries Pennings Edmond.
"To be able to keep doing what I love, we need to protect our environment," she says. "I want to continue to have access to beautiful outdoor events, and a full range of colorful, biodiverse ingredients.
"When it comes to climate change, there are a lot of really tough challenges that we're still working to solve," Pennings Edmond adds. "Sustainable events, however, are not an unsolved problem. The solutions already exist. We simply need to choose them."
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