Our Chief Revenue Officer, Claire Chalmers had the opportunity to discuss how to win in hospitality with sustainability with the Foodservice Equipment Journal. Visit the article here.

As hospitality operators continue to hone in on their sustainability strategies, Claire Chalmers, chief revenue officer at Nutritics, discusses how environmental issues are driving change in the industry and how businesses can keep on top of trends and implement greener practices.

Despite the challenging operating environment, it’s clear that the most forward-thinking operators are determined to keep building their sustainability credentials.

And with good reason. Because while it’s very nice to do good things for the planet, they can see that it really matters. Environmental concerns are only rising up the agenda, for both guests and hospitality employees, and becoming a vital driver of where people choose to eat, drink and work.

SUSTAINABILITY & STAFF RETENTION

We can see from our own research that sustainability has become a top priority for consumers. And it’s also a very significant priority for those working in hospitality – a key driver of retention. Our latest study Sustainability Matters: Why your teams take it seriously, reveals that 76% of hospitality staff — and 88% of those in management positions — say they are more likely to stay in a job for longer if their employer makes a positive environmental impact. In this attritional cost environment, the opportunity to drive sustainability up the team agenda and potentially save on recruitment is something that hospitality operators are increasingly alive to.

As a consequence, many businesses we speak to and work with are making strides in inspiring teams to take greater action, placing sustainability at the heart of their strategies. But, with over three-quarters (78%) of staff saying their workplace could be doing more to be more sustainable, more still needs to be done.

To accelerate progress and motivate teams to take positive action, we know of several operators that have very successfully prioritised training programmes to give employees both the knowledge, the tools and the incentives to collectively work to meet sustainability targets. Unsurprisingly, this encourages wider participation and fosters a compelling can-do culture around sustainability.

DRIVE SPEND AND LOYALTY VIA SUSTAINABILITY

What our research also shows is that an increasing number of consumers consider sustainability when deciding where to eat or drink. According to our report Sustainability Matters: What Consumers Want and How Brands Can Respond, nearly 40% of consumers are likely to choose a pub or restaurant based on its sustainability credentials, whether these are goals being worked towards or milestones that have already been achieved.

Numerous restaurants across the UK are pioneering this through adopting a zero-waste approach to cooking, including methods such as using fermenting as a tool to increase the circularity of food systems.

Guests are willing to pay a premium for sustainable options, too. Over a third (37%) will spend more if a product or brand has strong sustainability credentials. In these pressurised times, it highlights a significant opportunity to enhance already slim margins for businesses factoring sustainability into their product mix. Over a quarter of consumers (28%) recognise that operators have increased their sustainability initiatives. It suggests there is plenty of scope for operators to gain competitive advantage in the battle for consumer loyalty.

Clearly, market positioning and guest demographics play a role in determining how visible sustainable menus should be. For many operators, it’s about including a hero dish or drink brand with great sustainability credentials, being open about their menus’ provenance, or enabling guests to click or scan a QR code for more detail on the amount of carbon, water and energy going into specific dishes, whether that’s on menus, websites or social media platforms.

BUILDING SUSTAINABLE MENUS

Our food system is responsible for around a third of all (global) emissions. Within hospitality, food accounts for up to 70% of venue emissions – a significant contributor to our sector’s climate impact. For hospitality to take real action and make meaningful reductions in emissions, operators can see that more sustainable menus are not really negotiable.

In our experience, the idea of reformulating or re-engineering dishes is not something that the food development team and chef fraternity universally embrace. And yet, growing pockets of this community are alive to this opportunity; to tweak dishes, to make them less expensive to produce, and kinder to the planet, with no compromise on how a dish tastes or how it performs on the menu. I know of one highly regarded sustainability champion whose brief to the kitchen is ‘the reformulated recipe must be even more delicious than the original dishes it’s replacing or sitting alongside’. Needless to say, his chefs love this kind of challenge.

This work is not necessarily about replacing protein or meat items, wholesale; it’s more about gently evolving dishes to include more plant-based items, beans and legumes perhaps. If this ‘more delicious than the original’ version is kinder to the nation’s health, to the planet and appeals to the growing demand for more sustainable dishes, then this seems pretty win-win to me. Especially when in many instances the reformulated versions can deliver better margins.

One operator I spoke to recently mentioned that he felt it was their responsibility, not the consumers’, to choose healthier, more sustainable options to offer their diners.

SUSTAINABILITY – A COCKTAIL OF OPPORTUNITY?

Our sense is that sometimes, operators can see implementing sustainability-related change as challenging, especially in this unforgiving trading environment. The temptation is to simplify operations and park environmental projects.

What we know and can also see happening, though, is that the businesses leading in this area are alive to the opportunities to leverage their green strategy – to win new customers, improve margins and inspire their staff.

All reports in the Sustainability Matters series are available to download now on the Nutritics website.