Manufacturing The Good Straw

- Kate Krader

Last fall, Porchlight, a Southern-themed cocktail lounge in New York City operated by the Union Square Hospitality Group, decided to ditch plastic straws. So Mark Maynard, the bar’s director of operations, decided his staff would test some eco-friendly alternatives. They placed 20 different paper straws in glasses of water. The one from Aardvark, the only company that makes paper straws commercially in the U.S., was the standout, he says. It held together better than the rest for well over an hour.

Offering Aardvark’s straws at Porchlight took a little longer than expected. When the bar’s procurement office contacted the Fort Wayne, Ind., company to place an order, it was told the wait time could be as long as three months. “They said, ‘We’re sorry. A lot of people have jumped on board recently,’ ” Maynard says.

Aardvark got back into the business of making straws in 2007—its roots are in a company dating to 1888 that invented the paper straw—largely because of a growing anti-plastic movement and increasing demand for eco-friendly products. Several companies, including Walt Disney Co. and the Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants founded by Ted Turner, reached out to Aardvark that year, asking if it might again make the paper straws it was once known for, according to David Rhodes, the company’s global business director. More than 30 years after the onslaught of plastic put an end to that part of its business, Aardvark re engineered its process, refined the paper and the glues used in manufacturing, and issued a basic white straw.