Steven Binus, 25, not only has a green thumb, but a green mindset. At age 21, Binus bought his own bakery and renovated it from the ground up. Today, His Garden Bakery and Café is a vegan, eco-friendly dining spot complete with its own organically grown fresh garden.

“It’s a community thing,” says Binus of his café success. “I hold all the responsibility I guess ultimately, but we’re all here to grow. The garden brings people together.”


Binus got the idea to start a bakery when he was studying abroad in Greece after having a dream about walking through a wheat field. He wrote down the dream in his journal but thought nothing of it. A year later, Binus took a year off from attending Walla Walla University in Washington in order to become a pastor. When one of his church members offered him his failing bakery as a joke, Binus seized the opportunity. He took out a loan and started his own vegan bakery with his friend Joshua Stephens.

Binus then returned to school and started remodeling his new business. He expanded the bakery to double its original size and did all of the electrical and plumbing work himself. Binus was taking 23 upper-division credits, working 10-14 hours a day and studying for six more hours a night. “The first two years were hell,” Binus admits.

But now business is booming. Even with the economic downturn, a steady flow of customers still frequent the café. His Garden Bakery and Café is the only vegan restaurant in town, so there’s no competition for his produce. “Once they’re used to really quality food you can’t go back to crap, so they just keep coming,” says Binus.

Binus offers an array of organic and fresh food. The avocado sandwich is the best selling item on the menu, made of fresh avocado, tomato, onions, cucumbers, lettuce and 100 percent fresh ground whole wheat bread. Because they’re an animal product free café, Binus substitutes vegenaise for mayonnaise, ground flack seed for eggs, soymilk for milk and soy cheese for cheese. The café also grows its own organic vegetables and produce. The rest of their ingredients come from United Natural Foods, whole salers and a local supermarket across the street.

“Our body is all that we have, it’s our vehicle in life,” Binus says of the importance of healthy food. “Your diet will affect your mind, and if you have a clean mind then you’re going to be able to make decisions better, have more energy, and you’re going to be able to do so many more things.”

And since the café’s opening, Binus certainly has been able to do more things. Binus and his partner and deli manager Joshua Hogg have started their own botanical line that sells handmade health products. They make megafood product—a blend of vegetables and wheat grass in a powder form, colloidal gold and silver—a remedy thought to enhance healing and ionize their own water to create alkaline water free of minerals and contamination.

“I think getting back to the simple way of agriculture, organic farming and sustainable agriculture is taking old traditions and making them new,” says Binus of his organic growing. “Everybody wants to go green and go organic.”
Binus thinks it’s his ethic duty to the environment to go green and help the community in each small way he can. He said his proudest moment was replacing his espresso machine with a juicer. Binus felt he was contributing to unhealthy coffee addictions. Even though he lost money in the process, Binus said he did what was right for the
health of his customers. “Ethically each person’s gotta play their part to make themselves the best they can be,” Binus says.

By Katie Kravit