SqWires

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SQWIRES, located in the historic Lafayette Square neighborhood, is known for local foods and sustainable practices.

The dining room at SqWires is decorated almost entirely in repurposed materials including butcher block end tables, repurposed wine bottle vases, church pews, and vintage light fixtures. Repurposed materials save on energy, transportation, and virgin materials, making them nearly always a better choice for environmental furnishings. The restaurant itself is housed in a repurposed wire factory, which accounts for its namesake, which is a nod to the building’s previous life and to Lafayette Square. Remnants of the wire factory, like motors and enormous pulleys and gears, still decorate the high ceilings. Some of the practical furnishings even came from the building; the bar-top, for example, came from wood in the rafters of the factory.  The unique, lovely interior is well lit by the natural light from their windows, which have been tinted to reduce energy costs.

To reduce single-use plastic waste, SqWires serves their to-go food in repurposed wine boxes and compostable boxes, and they only serve straws on request. They try to reduce their paper waste any way they can, including cleverly repurposing old menus as coasters!

SqWires composts all of their organic waste from their kitchen and customers, reducing the amount of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) that comes from food waste in landfills. They avoid food waste at every step through a changing seasonal menu, clever use of specials, and assigning an expediter to pay attention to whatever foods aren’t being eaten (this way changes can be made by the chefs for the next shift).

SqWires tries to source locally whenever possible, especially during the growing season, where strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, beets, herbs, pea shoots, and more come from local farms, including mint from their own garden and tomatoes and peppers from Side Lot Farms. They even get local tomatoes all year round, thanks to more farmers adopting hoop houses for cold-season growth! Their chicken either comes from Buttonwood Farms or Wenneman’s, and their turkey always comes from Buttonwood. They use local eggs, and Fox River Dairy for their goat cheese. SqWires always has 100% local beer on tap, showcasing the best our region has to offer.

They conserve water with tankless toilets, aerators on their faucets, and keeping a close eye out for dripping sinks. They reuse wine bottles to serve chilled water bottles for customers to refill for themselves, reducing the water waste associated with automatic refills.  There’s even a raingarden located in their adjacent pocket park that SqWires maintains, which was paid for by a MSD grant to reduce stormwater runoff.

SqWires works hard at integrating sustainability into all of its operations. Pay them a visit on your next date night or for their Sunday brunch to taste their green efforts for yourself!