Flat Top Grill's stir-fry concept allows it to be creative when it comes to energy-saving promotional events such as Earth Hour. Lights will be out, but dinner will still be on.

Of course there are exceptions. Among them is Oak Park, Ill.-based restaurant chain Flat Top Grill, which has expanded its eco-friendly marketing efforts from just one in-store green event in 2008 to three in 2009.

The most dramatic of Flat Top's promotions is scheduled for Earth Hour on March 28, an international one-hour time slot when people and businesses worldwide volunteer to turn off the lights to save electricity. In most restaurant chains, this flip of the switch would cause chaos. But at Flat Top Grill, all meals are prepared on the eponymous grill, so the lights can go out between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. and customers can still dine by candlelight.

"We had a good response last year, so we wanted to do it again," explains Keene Addington, Flat Top's founder.

But the build-your-own-stir-fry chain did not want to fell trees to print signage for the store or direct-mail announcements, so it turned to that new standby: e-mail. The chain has a very loyal core of diners who request updates via e-mail. When it conducts its annual e-mail survey, the participation rate tops 50 percent, Addington says. he thinks of these efforts as "bonding" with the chain's customers, who tend to be 18 to 33 years old, rather than marketing to them.

There will be some in-store alerts as well, adds Dawn Campbell, a marketing specialist with the chain. Servers will wear t-shirts (made from organic cotton, of course) with tips on how to go green on the back.

Flat Top is planning similar promotions for Earth Week in April and Green Consumer Week later in the year.

And it is not just the promotions. The chain does green things year-round, from buying ingredients locally whenever possible, printing menus on biodegradable paper and using placemats made from sustainable materials.

"Consumers are demanding more. Their awareness is heightened," says Campbell, who handles all of Flat Top Grill's marketing collateral in-house. "We want to make sure we are doing everything we can, but we are doing it by starting a dialogue with our guests. The marketing has to be minimal because green is about the bigger picture."

Boston-based emerging restaurant chain Boloco's green efforts aren't minimal, but, like Flat Top, its green marketing efforts are. The chain is one of only two chains that are certified by the Green Restaurant Association. The third-party certification has given the chain street cred when it comes to being green, but still President and COO Michael Harder doesn't like to make it part of the chain's marketing efforts.

"You cannot preach. You cannot make it a moral thing," Harder cautions.

Planet Smoothie solicited green ideas in store to come up with an eco-friendly solution to its polystyrene cup problem.

"We do a horrible job of letting people know what we are doing. We think it feels preachy," Harder says. The chain does use Twitter and Facebook to talk to its customers, and in the restaurants the cups and bowls do some green talking on their own. The corn-based cups, for example, are printed with the line, "This cup grew up in Blair, Nebraska."

Instead of having its cups do the talking, Atlanta-based Planet Smoothie got its customers involved in spreading the green word. The concept promoted a contest based around the chain's polystyrene cups in 2008. Consumers had asked the chain to switch to an eco-friendly option, says Becky Shell, Planet Smoothie's vice president of marketing, but the chain had not found one that kept the consistency of the smoothie in the way that the polystyrene does.

The Inventor's Challenge contest invited customers to propose economical options for reusing or repurposing the existing cups. A panel of three judges evaluated the more than 100 proposals, selecting one with a recycling initiative where diners would receive one free smoothie for every nine cups they bring in for recycling. The winner, announced earlier this year, received a $5,000 cash prize and a year's worth of free smoothies. But more important, Shell says, the 128-unit chain was able to get the word out about why it uses its current cups while simultaneously showing that it values sustainability.

The chain is now looking into implementation of the winning suggestion, and Shell is confident that the contest was the right move for the brand.

"The cup is the first step because that is most important because we are a beverage company," she says. "If your green efforts are not truly part of the brand, it may not work as well."