For years, I’ve joked that all a restaurateur has to do is ensure the food is hot and the beer’s cold. While those are two essential elements of the job that in themselves require a lot of work behind the scenes, I’m more convinced than ever that we can and should be using our privileged position to do more than serve customers food and drink at the right temperature.
Since we opened our doors back in 2002, we’ve strived to find those farmers and fishers who share our respect for the land, sea and creatures they rear and catch. We’ve committed to putting our restaurants at the heart of their community, to respecting and rewarding our growing team of dedicated colleagues and constantly looked for new ways to reduce our own impact on the environment. All, so our customers can enjoy a meal that not only tastes great but does good too.
This week, we had confirmation from the Sustainable Restaurant Association, an organisation we proudly joined as founder members back in 2010, that we’d not only met their Food Made Good Standard, but achieved Three Stars – the highest possible rating.
It’s the world’s largest sustainability certification for restaurants and, believe me, it truly is a 360-degree holistic assessment of your whole operation.
Trading is tough right now but that doesn’t mean it’s time to start cutting corners and finely slicing your principles.
We couldn’t be prouder of the achievement, and are indebted to our incredible team and all our brilliant suppliers for sticking with us and our long held and fundamental philosophy that it’s possible to be ethical and profitable.
A special mention to:
Haye Farm in Devon (a relative newcomer), for providing us with phenomenal organic beef, lamb, mutton, charcuterie and chicken.
Stickleback – who’ve been helping us navigate the choppy waters of sustainable seafood for many a year
Mad Squirrel – our trusted Hertfordshire beer supplier
While we’ll take five minutes to celebrate, we never stand still because there’s always more we can be doing. Armed with the SRA’s recommendations for further action, we’ve already identified ways for us to tread more lightly on the planet and I’ll be sharing progress over the coming months.
I’ve never been more convinced that deeds rather than words are what matters and that’s why it’s so important restaurants make themselves open to scrutiny in what’s a rigorous, global, third party accreditation of everything we do on this delicious journey to serving meals that matter.
