So much for the truce between Wild Edibles and union group Brandworkers International. Self-described radical blog Next Left Notes brings news and video footage from a protest at City Bakery. According to a Brandworkers mouthpiece, it’s not cool that City Bakery’s Maury Rubin is friends with Wild Edibles honcho Richard Martin, who, the Brandworkers guy claims, is a “really sleazy guy,” “really, really nasty,” and “also racist.” Hence, last weekend, about a dozen folks gathered outside of City Bakery, banged on drums, and told passersby that “sweatshop fish [is] served up daily.…Don’t eat the fishes here. They’re tainted with exploitation!” You get the idea. Rubin, who is known for his green business practices and offering benefits to his employees, can’t be pleased about this. We’ve asked him for comment and will update you with his response.

Workers March on Global Day of Action [Next Left Notes]
Related: Wild Edibles Starts Picketing Back

Last week we wondered why notoriously progressive Birdbath wasn’t on a list of restaurants certified by the Green Restaurant Association. Owner Maury Rubin, who also operates City Bakery, tells us he didn’t seek certification from the GRA partly because he feels their requirements don’t go far enough. And how far is he willing to go? By this summer, he says, he’ll institute a program which offers his employees incentives, via a “company-wide friendly competition” for saving energy in their private lives. He’s also launching a program that will give his customers price cuts if they sign up for wind energy. We asked him to share some wisdom he’s gleaned from trying to run the most environmentally sound (and still profitable!) food business in the country.

City Bakery's Maury Rubin employed CIA-worthy stealth tactics last winter to open Birdbath, his environmentally friendly, sustainably built organic bakery where the staff wears hemp and the walls are made from sunflower-seed husks. Now, though, with two new branches under way and more on the horizon, an expansionist-mode Rubin dispenses with the cloak-and-dagger routine. By January, he expects to open Birdbath No. 2 in a highly visible West Village location across McCarthy Square from Keith McNally's impending Morandi, at the corner of Seventh Avenue South and Charles Street, and next fall, the third outpost should materialize at the megagreen Riverhouse luxury-condominium project in Battery Park City. Besides keeping Manhattan well supplied with oversize chocolate-chip cookies and raspberry bran muffins, Rubin aims to align the organic ingredients in his food with the renewable, ecofriendly construction materials used to build the stores where it's sold. Learn more at buildagreenbakery.com.

— Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld

Mystery Muffins [NYM]