Johannes Restaurant taking a stand against water wasters

One restaurant in Palm Springs is taking a stand against the drought.

Johannes Restaurant will no longer be serving tap water but instead will be charging $1 for sustainable bottled water.

It’s a bold move which has many people questioning the restaurant’s motives.

But the restaurant owner and chef, Johannes Bacher, said there’s a number of reasons why serving bottled water is a necessary step in drought relief.

“People order water and say fill it up and only take two sips of it. So if you put that all together on a low scheme of it, we use 20, 30, 40 gallons of water every day,” Bacher said.

He said on June 15 they will only serve bottled Waiwera water from New Zealand.

“Its an unspoiled source from New Zealand, that’s another effort I do natural, organic, certified, sustainable. All my water comes from sources that have plenty and they all are organic and sustainable,” Bacher said.

The restaurant said they serve around 75,000 glasses of water and ice in a year, which many times goes untouched.

Bacher said there’s only so much he can do with unused tap water.

“But I cannot reuse the water that is poured from the tap with the ice and everything, it’s against the law. I cannot use it for cooking, the only thing I can use it for is to water my plants,” Bacher said.

He said if guests happen to leave unused bottled water he will think about using what’s left to rinse dishes with before they go in the dishwasher.

While some applaud the restaurant for taking a step in the right direction, they said they’d still like the option of tap water.

“I think taking tap off your service menu is not really helping the drought, it’s just another way to add something to the ticket,” Palm Springs resident Patrick Kilian-White said.

But as far as the added cost, some don’t seem to mind.

“That’s par for the course, I mean you go to the store and you’re spending a dollar plus at least. So to sit down at a restaurant, to enjoy, plus you can recycle the plastic inevitably,” Palm Desert resident Daniel Trout said.

The restaurant took some heat from social media Thursday about this policy.

Bacher said if someone really demands tap water would he serve it but he would also try to educate the customer on why he feels his no tap water policy is important.