‘Dumbest idea’ becomes record-making eatery
and that’s when they told me that Houston did not have a certified green restaurant. So that’s when I said, ‘Whoa, why don’t you open a certified green restaurant, Houston doesn’t have one,’ and that’s when he said that I was stupid and it would never work – the dumbest idea he ever heard.”
However, this did not stopMarques, but instead further prompted him to make this goal a reality for himself. Eventually, he was able to convince Chef BruceMolzan to undertake the project. Molzan introducedMarques to someone who would become the other Ruggles Green owner, Robert Guillerman.
“Robert liked the idea, I drew up a business plan, we opened up a restaurant,” Marques said.
Throughout the process of building the first Ruggles Green in River Oaks, Marques was dumbfounded to find a lack of organic foods, commercial compost and recycling companies in Houston, making his goal harder.
“When we first opened, you could find nothing organic in Houston,” Marques said. “You couldn’t find any organic flour, no organic sugar, no organic tomato paste. None of the food distributors distributed it, there was nothing. So we had to figure it out. There was no recycling, and there was no compost. No, we had to do it ourselves, so it was extremely difficult.”
In December 2008, the River Oaks location became the first certified green restaurant in Houston. Four years later, Ruggles Green unveiled another location in City Centre that eventually became the first restaurant in Texas to receive the 4 Star Certification by the Green Restaurant Association. Various restaurant components like the installment of LED lights, recycling of fry oil into bio-fuel, the use of hormone and preservative-free food products, and a state-of-the art energy management system aided him in scoring high in seven of the required categories and surpassing the minimum score of 100 points with a grand total of 300 points in review.
Despite these accomplishments, Marques still has plans to build two more locations— in the Heights and in Sugar Land— and make one of them the greenest restaurant in the world.
That goal aside, Marques ensures that he is committed to providing great service to customers, with several outlets to give feedback.