Fall River Pub – be the change

By Jeff Green

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Paul and Michelle Zammit before they receive a certificate of merit presented by Peter Love, Ontario’s Chief Energy Conservation Officer

Alternative energy and local food are two common buzzwords these days, and there are times when they seem to be tacked on to every corporate ad campaign or government policy document.

For some people, however, they are more than words; they represent a long-term commitment to make real changes in how lives are lived and business is done.

For Paul and Michele Zammit, the owners of the Fall River Pub & Grill and Gift Store in Maberly, they represent more than a commitment; they are the founding philosophy and an everyday part of their business.

“We had been living in Maberly for over 10 years when all this started. I was working as a mechanic and Michelle as a software developer. We knew we wanted to do a business, and even though I had already built a house in this area, we were looking at moving. We didn't know where but we knew that it would have to be some kind of multiple business scenario, because single businesses have a hard time surviving,” Paul Zammit recalled in a conversation last week. “We tried to get feedback from people and even put out a questionnaire and the answers kept pointing to a restaurant.

“We sat and looked at the Maberly garage [then owned by the Stanleys] for over an hour one day, just looking at it, and wondering whether it could be the spot for the kind of business we wanted to build.”

Paul knew the building. As a mechanic he had worked in it years earlier. He also knew that it had asbestos on the walls and grease and petroleum products soaked into the floors - not exactly the obvious location for a fine restaurant and gift store. It was also located on a relatively lonely stretch of Hwy. 7, a 20 minute drive from the nearest population centre (Perth), and over an hour's drive from Kingston or Ottawa.

“Through our research, we knew that with the cottage population all around us .. and with Perth not that far away, we could draw people in. As for the building, I knew its flaws, I'll admit that,” Paul said. “There are always reasons why you can’t do something, but I always prefer to say ‘how hard can it be?’”.

They took the plunge, bought the building, gutted it completely and cleaned up all the chemical residues. They fought with the Township of Tay Valley for zoning, fought with the Ministry of Transportation over entrances, and started building what has now been identified as the “Greenest Restaurant in Canada”.

On Nov. 15 Fall River was presented with a certificate of merit from Ontario’s Chief Energy Conservation Officer.

The goal is to go further, much further. “We want to be self sufficient in terms of energy, and we want to go well inside of the 100 km radius for the bulk of the food we prepare,” Zammit said. “We want to be the greenest restaurant in the world.”

To do all this, and turn a profit, the Zammits have relied mostly on their ingenuity, skills, and capacity for hard work. While Paul is the dreamer and the builder of the two, Michele brings the kind of business sense needed to make a business profitable. That involved expanding the gift store business to Perth by opening a shop on Gore Street, and keeping a sharp eye on the books and the marketing part of the business.

“I’ve always been fascinated with how people used to figure out how to get by in the early days around here - 100 years ago, 150 years ago, without power, without tractors, they had to figure out how to make things work,” Paul Zammit said.

Putting those kinds of ideas into practice has led Paul to take advantage of some of the geographic features of his location, one being that there is a spring running underground beneath the restaurant. The Fall River also traverses the property.

It was possible to capture some of the cooling effects of all that rushing water to cool the restaurant in summer. For heating in the winter, used fryer oil is decanted and distilled to turn into stove oil. One project that caught public attention was the straw bale coffee canteen that was built in the parking lot of the restaurant several years ago. Future projects include an expanded greenhouse, a micro-hydro project on the Fall River, which could turn the restaurant into a net supplier of electricity, and a large solar panel project as well.

The Fall River restaurant is a magnet for ideas. The idea of taking advantage of winter weather to create a large block of ice in an insulated ice house, and then take advantage of the cooling power of the melting ice during the summer, was recently being floated to Paul from a neighbour, Doug Nuttal, who works for Mississippi Valley Conservation.

“It's not really high tech stuff that we have been using,” said Paul. “There is wealth of technology in every scrap yard, it is just waiting to be harnessed”.

The Fall River Pub & Grill has made its reputation over the past seven years, and each year sales have increased because of the quality of the food.

While locally grown and ethically produced food is a priority for the Zammits, there have been compromises to suit the market. “Sometimes my consciousness gets put on the back burner,” Paul Zammit admits, “we need to satisfy the market to pay the bills”.

However, consciousness is never too far on the backburner for the Zammits, it just sometimes take time to work out solutions. At one time, their best-selling dish was salmon. People loved it, but the production of farmed salmon is a real problem that has posed threats to the wild salmon population. In order to remove salmon from the menu, an alternative needed to be found. Finally one was, and arctic char, which is harvested by an Inuit co-op and flown south, has become a mainstay on the menu in place of salmon.

“It takes time, but we are able to bring local lamb, local chicken, vegetables, and more to the restaurant. Every day we assess what we are doing, from the point of view of producing good food, serving local beer and wine, and energy consumption,” said Zammit.

The certificate of merit presented by Peter Love, Ontario’s Chief Energy Conservation Officer, to the Zammits said that the Fall River Pub and Grill serves up “a delicious platter of energy efficiency, combined with renewable construction materials and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, served with locally grown organics food, proving that a culture of conservation can dress up your table and increase your profits.”