School or not to school

Jed Lazar turned his sustainable MBA into a bicycle-powered business that continues to roll on despite the recession.

A whopping 77 percent of graduate business programs reported an increase in admissions in late 2008, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council. The obvious conclusion? Many Americans have decided to sit this recession out and go back to school. They are hoping to boost their credentials and emerge into a better job market in a year or two. Do they have the right idea? 

Portland business owners Jed Lazar and Shauna Lambert, 2008 graduates of Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI), launched SoupCycle just as the West Coast started feeling the effects of the ensuing recession. Yet, while larger companies are downsizing, Lazar and Lambert—after eight months of preparing and delivering organic soup to Portland residents by bike—are preparing to expand their operation into new territory. With Lambert as the executive chef and Lazar as the pedal pusher, SoupCycle has made more than 2,000 total bicycle deliveries to individuals and businesses in the urban core since launching in July 2008, avoiding about 1,000 car miles.

“One of the main things you get from business school is the network of people you meet in school, and that’s definitely true for SoupCycle,“ Lazar says. He notes that SoupCycle’s first customers were from BGI, a business school located on Bainbridge Island near Seattle that offers a sustainable MBA program. While not yet accredited, BGI is well-known for its deep commitment to sustainable business education.

And because it’s a distance-learning school, many BGI students hail from Portland. “They still make up our core,” Lazar says of SoupCycle’s customer base. “That community has been invaluable.”

But for Kristofer Lofgren, owner of Bamboo Sushi, the first U.S. restaurant to serve sushi made with Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified fish, school has taken a backseat to running a business.

Lofgren, a former sustainable MBA student at the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco, co-founded the Japanese restaurant Masu East in 2007. Then he bought out his partner, changed the restaurant’s name to Bamboo Sushi, and started serving MSC-certified fish, added a composting program, switched to biodegradable containers and started paying an extra percentage-per-kilowatt to ensure Bamboo Sushi’s power comes from renewable sources.

It proved to be a good decision: Business is thriving, even while consumers are trying to curb spending. Customers routinely wait for more than 45 minutes on weekend evenings for a table.