Sustainability is an important factor in how food is sourced, grown, made, stored, cooked, packaged and transported. Food supply has a significant impact on the environment and there is a growing demand from both the industry itself and customers who want to buy and eat food that is more sustainably produced.
It’s estimated that international food systems are responsible for between a quarter to a third of greenhouse emissions.
Across the food sector, we are seeing sustainability becoming a key consideration as understanding of the industry’s role in climate change becomes more well known. There is a drive towards sustainability from the whole industry, from growers, producers and suppliers to vendors and customers.
The journey towards improved sustainability will require the industry to embrace change and move towards practices that reduce emissions. The food industry is complicated and a move towards sustainability requires looking at the whole chain and making necessary changes towards a better system for people and the planet.
We believe that working towards sustainability is important for the future benefits of everyone. We are working with partners towards becoming net zero, building agreed and achievable targets and making commitments for longer term solutions. The move towards sustainability requires industry wide change and while we can’t do everything on day one, we are prioritising changes that can be made quickly with big impacts.
We are working closely with both our customers and suppliers and collaborating with wider stakeholders and government to ensure we can play our part in making the sector more sustainable. This includes looking at reducing energy consumption, moving towards more sustainable energy sources, ensuring all our systems are as efficient as possible, considering food miles for ingredients, locally sourcing and embracing sustainable packaging.
In our conversations with customers, we are discussing sustainability targets and creating solutions that help meet them. As an independent business, we can be flexible in not only our recipes but also how we source, make, package and ship dishes, meaning we can think creatively about how we can take steps towards more sustainability.