White Dog Café

Our first night in Philly, we met at the White Dog Café, the premiere eco-conscious restaurant in town. We were joined by Udall alumni locals Jesse Hunting (’03, ’04), Andrew Joslyn (’03), Josh Meyer, (’04, ’05) Ben Perry (’98), and Temple University Honors Program director Ruth Ost. We filled the room, but our footprints were small - everything on the menu was as safe for our environment as possible.

And that’s because of Judy Wicks, owner of the White Dog, who joined us while we ate to talk about how personal conviction, environmental stewardship, and the restaurant business came together for her.

She began to integrate social consciousness into her restaurant business in the 1980s, when she opened up her café to speakers on issues she cares about, began organizing trips to other countries centered around various social concerns she had, and initiated a network of sister restaurants with business around the globe. Today, these events are still going on, and she sets the bar higher and higher, buying local and organic, hormone-free and green, with wind power offsets for shortcomings.


But the bar she sets extends beyond the walls of the three adjoining stone-clad brownstones that make up the restaurant. She says a restaurant cannot strive for sustainability on its own, because what does that do for a sustainable economy? She pointed out that when businesses start sustainable, continue to be successful, and decide to grow, they often have a tendency to get bought out, and their original goals of sustainability get laid aside by new owners. Staying local and true to ideals is the way that sustainable businesses can be just that. This led me to compare this model with the stop we made at the Philadelphia Fryodiesel and to contrast with larger corporations who integrate ideas of sustainability into their operations.

She is proud to be a business and not a non-profit – business is where it needs to be shown that green makes green and is where leaders and pioneers are sorely needed. She sets out to be a model business for other restaurants and pushes them to be better. She co-founded and co-chairs both the international Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia.

Even the name of the White Dog was born from a colorful history on the premises. Ms. Wicks discovered one day, as someone came knocking, that she happened to take up residence in the same house that Madame Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, occupied before. She found old letters of Madame Blavatsky’s, and in one of them, she read that all the healing Madame Blavatsky used for an injured leg was a white dog.

By: Kayanna Warren