Eco-visionary Brian Hicks couldn’t stand sending the hundreds of thousands of pounds of spent coffee grounds from his and other restaurants to landfill, so he started a business called Groundsteam to collect and convert them to compost instead.
Brian Hicks is the owner of a Tim Hortons restaurant in Devon, Alberta Canada. Like many restaurant owners, he is concerned with the cost and environmental impact of the organic waste from his restaurant going into landfill. One fine day in 2012, Brian was chatting with a local farmer about this challenge and how he was looking for a solution – not just for HIS used coffee grounds, but for those from all the local restaurants. He and the farmer talked it through, and the first step of his idea was born. They’d haul away the coffee grounds, compost them and use them on the farm as soil enhancement. In return, Brian would give the farmer all the coffee he could drink…
By the end of December 2017, Brian had diverted over 500,000 pounds of coffee grounds from the waste stream from his restaurant alone! His restaurant was honored as the first recipient of the Devon Environmental Sustainability Award and Brian was nominated and as a finalist for the Province of Alberta Emerald Award.
Building on his success, Brian started GroundSteam in 2017 and has since expanded his service to many restaurants in the Edmonton area.
