Unknown Speaker 0:02
Hello and welcome. I'm Harry kind.
Unknown Speaker 0:04
And I'm Grace Forrel,
Speaker 1 0:05
And this is Get Answers for living your best consumer life.
Speaker 2 0:08
When life gives you questions which get answers.
Speaker 1 0:13
On today's show, we'll be talking food waste, how can you save money, reduce your contribution to climate change, and spend less time shopping, all while eating better grub, we'll be joined by the founder of the full freezer, Kate Hall to learn how to eliminate food waste at home. And then later, we'll be talking to witches own Shefali Lauf, who's going to reveal the most and least sustainable restaurant chains according to her recent investigation. Now, guys, before we start, let me give you the lay of the land when it comes to food waste right now, according to rap, which is the big campaign on food waste. The UK wastes around 11 million tons of food. And while some of that happens on the farm, or in the factory, sadly, 60% of it is actually getting all the way into our houses into our fridges before we then chuck it away. And actually we buy 42 million tons of food and food waste is about a quarter of that. Now, to me, not all bad news is good news. We've got the power to make a difference. But I want to get a sense check from you Grace, because there's some big numbers. Do you have a handle on how much you throw? Do you think it's around about that quarter of the kind of total food that's created?
Speaker 3 1:21
I mean, those numbers, they're just so big, aren't they? It's actually hard to fathom what it actually means. I mean, I would say with my food waste, I try not to waste food, but I do. And I know for me, the biggest culprits are hummus, I just can't seem to get through an entire tub of hummus, but I want it I want to have him as in my fridge. Also, I buy things that are reduced in the reduced section of the supermarket with good intentions and then don't get around to eating them. They go into the bin. And lemons and limes are another thing because you kind of you buy a pack of them and they use one or two and then they just go kind of moldy in my fridge. So I hear I don't know if I throw away a quarter of my food but certainly a bit.
Speaker 1 1:59
I want to be that Dakota Johnson of having the big bowl of limes and just saying I love limes and having them there all the time. But they just go unless you really get into Gin Tonics, I find and and also like it's almost an argument for I find myself wishing for some shrinkflation on hummus, I wish I could have a smaller pot of hummus that I would eat in maybe a sitting or sitting at the farmers. But I am going to say that we've probably got a solution to some of this, because today we're joined by the wonderful Kate Hall, who is the founder of the full freezer, the author of the full freezer method, which is coming out next week. Very good timing. But most importantly, like me, she is a freezer nerd. Welcome to the show. Kate.
Unknown Speaker 2:41
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 2:43
Thank you. Let's get into it. Freezes give us a pitch. Can they help us reduce food waste?
Speaker 2 2:49
Oh, like you would not believe so you know talking about your hummus and your lemons and your limes. You can freeze them. You can use them from Frozen. You can defrost them quickly. We won't dive into that too much, because I will just spend the whole time just speaking about that. But yes, most of us think that our freezers can be used for short bought frozen food, it can be used for batch cooking. Actually, it is a magic pause button in our kitchen. It is an appliance that is always running, it's always on and so many people are underutilizing it because they don't realise that they can freeze those individual ingredients that would usually end up in the bin. So starting to use our freezer as that pause button instead of letting that food go in the bin can save us so much food but also so much money.
Speaker 1 3:33
Well let's jump into lemons. And since we mentioned lemons, what would you do? You've bought five lemons, you've used two. Yeah, the three are starting to look a little bit dodgy.
Speaker 2 3:41
You've got choices. Yes. So you could freeze the whole lemon or lime. But you are then going to have to use the whole lemon or lime when you defrost it and it's going to take longer to defrost or you can have to microwave it and you have that risk that if you don't do it on very, very low, it will explode. So please don't do that. That was saying. But the things that I would recommend are to take one of those lemons or limes, slice it up as you would have it in your gin and tonic, lay it out on a line tray and pop it into the freezer. It can just be whatever flat surface in the freezer. And once it's frozen solid, you can store those in a freezer bag. And when you have your nice cold crisp gin and tonic, you can add a frozen slice of lemon or lime or whatever fruit to be honest, probably not banana, but you know your berries and all of that and just use them as ice cubes.
Speaker 1 4:27
This is dangerous because actually the idea of having frozen lemon slices on hand for a gin and tonic. Yeah.
Speaker 2 4:34
And it makes a beautiful sound that fizz when you drop it in. It's very nice for Friday afternoon, you know as the sun's coming out in the summer.
Speaker 1 4:42
I mean, this just shows right so I would say lemons would be the kind of thing that I would be really worried about freezing. I think they'd end up as mush. I wouldn't know what to do with them when they're coming out. I think that's probably the same that a lot of people feel about a lot of foods in their freezer. What are people doing wrong?
Speaker 2 4:59
A lot of the time, it's about how people are freezing things and the assumption that they have to defrost everything. So when we freeze things, any water that is in the cells of the food is going to expand and break the walls of the cells. So if you defrost it, you're going to end up with a pool of mush, it's not going to be very nice. And if you freeze it in a to bigger quantity, so for example, like putting that whole lemon, or that whole line into the freezer, or other things like if you froze, I don't know like mushrooms whole without slicing them first. And then you let them defrost, they are going to lose, you know the firmness that they've got, because all of the water's coming out of the cells, if you cook with them straight from Frozen. And if you frozen them already sliced or already, however you want to use them, and you cook them straight from frozen over a nice high heat evaporate off the water quickly, you can retain some of that structure in the food. So it's very much about thinking before you put stuff into the freezer. And then when I want to defrost it, I usually would freeze that flat and have it in a freezer bag so it doesn't take up much space, I can then just pop it in a dish of cold water. And the water conducts heat much more effectively than air. So it will draw the ice out of the food much faster. And then you can get to cooking much quicker. So anybody who is not good at getting the food out of the freezer the night before, like, I'm your girl, I cannot do that. It's an hour before we that I go, what do you what do you fancy and all the food will come straight from the freezer, and either be defrosted quickly or cooked from Frozen? Is
Speaker 3 6:35
there a hard and fast rule over what needs to be defrosted before you cook and what you can just chuck straight into the pan,
Speaker 2 6:42
I would say I mean, most stuff can be cooked straight from Frozen. The one thing that I tend to strongly recommend defrosting is meat. And particularly, you know, I mean, if it's joints of meat, unless you have a pressure cooker, you're going to need to defrost it because otherwise it's going to be overcooked on the outside and it's going to be frozen in the middle still. And it's just you're either gonna make yourself very sick, or it's going to be an edible. Basically, if you've got something like meatballs, you know, because they're smaller, because they're not going to tend to overcook in the same way that you would something like chicken, you can get away with cooking that from Frozen. But really, I strongly recommend using a heat probe thermometer to check if you have cooked something from Frozen. Even if you're reheating something that was previously cooked using a thermometer will give you so much more confidence that you know you've got it up to a safe temperature. But yeah, most of all vegetables, I would cook straight from Frozen, whether they were shot bought or whether I'd frozen them myself. So it's just such a good time saver.
Speaker 1 7:40
And I've asked you the list of the heat safe temperatures, but actually better off people just get a witch Dakota, UK and your own website, it will all be listed there completely completely. So a lot of this sounds like you're kind of time shifting the prep of meals to before the freezing a lot of it rather than going this is the raw material. I'm just checking in and I'll do everything afterwards. Yeah, when do you kind of prep stuff for freezes.
Speaker 2 8:05
So this is something that shifts and changes dependent on how my life is looking. So sometimes there'll be things that I purposefully buy. And I'll get extra of because you know, I know I always have purpose in the freezer, I always want to cook my own because the shop bought ones are far too small. So I would always buy extra and whilst I've got dinner on, I would cut up the extra peppers and get them into the freezer. There are other times where it's literally like this morning, for example, my kids wanted Apple in their porridge. I only used I don't know about half two thirds of the apples. So I grated it into their porridge. But then I grated the rest of the apple bear just eating breakfast, I'm just getting ready. But it's 30 seconds, that I've just walked that into the freezer. So whilst you could spend time purposefully going, Okay, on a Saturday morning, I'm gonna get up I've got these things that I want to freeze, I really advocate for. I've got a minute here, I've got a minute there. And it largely centers around, what have I got in the fridge? That is not going to make it. So I've got you know, some carrots that I know we're not going to get through I've got potatoes in the cupboard that we're not going to get through. It's looking at them and going right. I'm going to press pause on it now because I know I'm not going to use that food. I know I'm not going to get through that hummus. So I'm going to freeze the half a tub when I open it so that I can use that later for something else. And it's just that shift of you know, if I know it's gonna go in the bin, yeah, then I'll take the three minutes that it might take to chop something up you know, chop up some onions, whatever and just get it in the freezer. Really getting into the habit. Yeah, yeah, it's an it is it is a shift of habit. Like I think when you've been, you know, I'd been cooking for 2015 20 years before I started doing this and it was a shift of habit for me even I used to batch cooks. So that was like my go to thing so it does take time to stop and think and you have have to have the freezer organized in a way that lets you find things as well. But once you get into that habit, it's quite addictive to be honest.
Speaker 1 10:07
Yeah, I've seen pictures of your freezer, and it is an incredible organization, a lot of freezer bags, a lot of labeling, it looks more like a filing cabinet than most people's freezers. How do you do that? And how can people do that at home? First of all, I
Speaker 2 10:24
can assure you the rest of my house is not that organized. The rest of it is devastation, but the freezer is very calming for me. So yes, as you describe it, so I store things in freezer bags, which I hasten to add, I wash and reuse. So I do not throw them away with every use. And everything is labeled across the top. So the ones I use have a colored strip across the top and you can write on it with a marker. And then you can wash it and rip it off and re label it which I find massively, massively helpful.
Speaker 1 10:51
Are they the IKEA ones they are I love those freezer bags,
Speaker 2 10:55
that bags so I was very lucky. The house we moved into came with an integrated freezer, which is full height. So I do have I think I've got eight drawers maybe, but some are very shallow, but they are labeled. So I have my baked goods, I have things that came collect pantry items, so like half leftover tins of things like kidney beans, and chickpeas and tomato puree, things like that. And then fruits and vegetables and leftovers like leftover meal items. So our flat freeze things like if I made more chili than we need, we'll have the leftover meals but also leftover meats. So cooked chicken or cooked bacon or whatever it might be the raw fish and the raw meter at the bottom to avoid cross contamination with anything else in the freezer. But the reason that I have sorted these categories there is one so I can find things really quickly, too. So my husband Ken Jennings, I'm sure we had this it was around it's in the drawer, but his label.
Unknown Speaker:You don't have a husband drawer. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2 12:00
no, he, I mean, every so often, he buys something really wildcard and I'm like that's not a drawer. Okay, that's fine, we'll we'll get those all right. But yeah, it just makes it so much easier. And for me, having things in the freezer bags makes it quite aesthetically pleasing as well. So it's quite a calming, nice space to go into, like, don't get me wrong, sometimes it gets a bit haphazard, if there's a food, you know, you get the shopping delivery, and somebody just chucked stuff in there has to be a reshuffle every so often. But it's very quick to do now that things have a place. And on top of being able to find the things quickly it also means that we're not using as much energy in terms of standing there with the door open for ages, it's C keeping the food colder, which is keeping it safer if we're you know, although I do go in and out of the freezer a lot. So, you know, it's it's a half a dozen. But it's something that allows me to introduce more variety to our food by having the categories it just keeps control of it, it just means that I can have 1520 30 different types of veg, for example, across one or two drawers and just have a handful of this a handful of that. And so, you know, my objective to try and have variety and are cooking and cook relatively healthily and from scratch is really enabled by it being a space that is organized that's accessible, and it's really satisfying when you make a meal and you go all of that stuff would have gone in the bin before.
Speaker 3 13:33
And I guess on that note about health, I think there's a misconception or at least there was that because something's frozen it's not fresh and it's not as healthy but actually it can be better can't it can't have more sort of nutrients locked inside it than just leaving something in your fridge for a while
Speaker 2 13:49
completely completely and I mean I'm I'm a massive advocate for although I don't buy a lot of shop bought frozen food purely because of the variety and obviously I'm here to help people reduce their food waste by freezing. So I don't buy a lot myself but I'm absolutely an advocate for buying frozen produce from your supermarket because if you are very busy and you want to eat well you've got so many different fruits and vegetables that are pre prepared you know they're they're ready to cook with chopped onions, chopped peppers, sweet potato berries, there are so many different frozen fruits and vegetables now that are available in the shops and as you say when you freeze things, you lock in the nutritional value.
Speaker 1 14:37
I think a concern like a lot of people might have about stuff in their freezer if they're especially if they're not doing it properly is that it will end up tasting like freezer or all end up tasting like cardboard. How do you stop that and what is actually going on there?
Speaker 2 14:50
Yeah, so usually if food has started to take on the taste or smell of freezer, it is either it's not been packaged particularly well. So maybe it's been put in a sandwich bag rather than a freezer bag or you've not sealed the bag. So if it's a short board item, you might have opened it up and just kind of scrunched up the bag and hope that none of the stuff falls out of it. So making sure that you squeeze out of whatever bags or containers you're using, and that they are actually suitable for the freezer, like a lot of people use takeaway tubs. And that plastic is usually not actually supposed to go in the freezer, it becomes very brittle. So it's just looking at what you're actually using to store the food in. And then in terms of timings, technically, if your freezer is like minus 18 degrees C, which is the recommended temperature, it should last, I mean, essentially indefinitely, although I'm not saying you should do. It's not a safety issue, because bacteria can't multiply at that temperature. But it is a quality issue. So the longer that food is in your freezer for the more the quality is going to deteriorate. And what's happening particularly, you see it with things like meat, where you get freezer burn, so it looks all mottled and not very pleasant, it's basically dehydration. So it's the moisture in the food coming and kind of migrating out of the food and into the freezer. And you know, we see it a lot with frozen veg as well, where you you end up with your veg frozen into an ice block, it's perfectly safe to eat right, it's fine, it's just the moisture from the food coming out. So the quality is going to be deteriorating. And in those instances, my advice is always you know, as long as it otherwise is okay, as long as it's not that the freeze is defrosted, and you've just turned it back on and refrozen everything or, or something like that, just use that food in something where you wouldn't notice it as much. So if it's veggies, you could make a soup and you could make a stew, you could check it in a curry. And the same for meats, you know, using meat that's been freezer burned, if you want to you can cut off any affected parts. But as I say, you know, it's just going to be a bit tougher, like I think it depends very much on how sensitive you are, in terms of your meals, you know, if you're if you're really, really into your food, and you can't stand it, you know, then you might want to cut those bits off. But most of the time, you wouldn't really be able to tell you won't really be able to notice if it's in a dish with a nice heavy source and plenty of flavor. But yeah, my general advice would be three to six months for most stuff, if you've got something that is very small or very thin. So to give you a comparison, actually, so if you've got, say some sliced ham, you could freeze the slices of ham, you can package those, so they've sort of got some baking parchment between or as individual slices or tear it up and open freeze it. So you've got little bits to chuck in pasture or omelets or pizza. But they are not going to last very long. Because it's so thin. And so delicate, you know, within a couple of weeks that is going to be really badly affected by freezer burn, even if you wrap it really well even if you vacuum packed it is going to start to be affected. If you have something like a ham joint, which is vacuum packed, and it's very substantial. And particularly if it's vacuum packed, there's nowhere for the moisture to go. So it's contained within that could be fine for a year for two years. It's all about kind of how delicate the food is and how much moisture there is in it to escape, and how easily that can happen. So just you know, look at the food and weigh up what you're freezing. And don't throw things away just for the sake of really, that
Speaker 1 18:30
is my motto as well. What are the gadgets and bits armor to buy? And do you need to buy much stuff to get into this? Not
Speaker 2 18:37
really, I mean, there are some things that are really necessary, I think so like thermometers, so a fridge and freezer thermometer with a remote display is very helpful. Like I said before, your freezer should be minus 18 degrees C. So if you've got a sensor you can put into the freezer and you can keep an eye on it. You know your food's safe and you know it's at a good temperature when you're actually cooking food probe thermometer is really really helpful and really reassuring to make sure your food is getting up to a nice safe temperature. And then the other things really you know I said about, like open freezing things. So like the lemons and lines that is literally just having a flat surface with some baking parchment on it. When I first started, I would use baking trays, picnic plates, plastic storage lids. Now I have stackable freezer trays, and I have reusable baking parchment. And they do make a difference for me because I'm constantly, you know, freezing the next thing and not just doing it for myself. I'm doing it for content as well. But it gives you something that is very structured and you're not going to end up with all the foods sliding off it and ending up in your freezer. Because
Speaker 3 19:42
open freezing is just freezing things individually sort of on a tray as you say so that they don't kind of clump together into one lump.
Speaker 2 19:50
Yeah, exactly that so it's literally as you say, just letting it freeze so that you've not got this sort of food Burg that you're going to have to defrost or whack on the counter. Great,
Speaker 1 20:00
wouldn't it be good if there was somewhere that people could find that were some of the best meat probe the monitors, if only there was a website, and a subscription service, which took credit UK, we have actually very recently done a test of thermometers, really interesting results. And actually some really cheap options out there. So everybody go check that out. On that note, we're going to go to a quick break now. But when we come back, we're going to be looking at some new which research about where the greenest chain restaurants are for when you're eating out, not just when you're eating at home. So join us after the break.
Speaker 1 20:39
Welcome back. Before we get into it, I'm going to ask you a quick favor. If you're liking what you're hearing, please take a minute to leave us a rating and a review, because it will help push our podcasts up in the algorithm. And ultimately, it gets heard by more people. Anyway, I'm pleased to say we're joined right now by Which? nutritionist Shefalee Loth, who has some great new research to share with us today.
Unknown Speaker:Hi, what is the research.
Unknown Speaker:So
Speaker 4 21:04
for the first time ever, we've surveyed High Street restaurant chains to see whether some are more eco friendly than others. We looked at a total of 28 chains that you'd see on your high street, those most frequented and also really popular with which members. And we sent out a huge survey asking them about their energy use their water use their sourcing policies for certain foods, their waste, and food waste and their plastic use, and also about the information that they supply to their customers and their targets for future reduction. And actually, we then got all that information back and crunched it into a huge spreadsheet and got results. And actually, there is a big difference between the restaurants that you would frequent on the high street.
Unknown Speaker:What were the results? And what did you find? Okay,
Speaker 4 22:01
so actually the top we call them eco providers at which the restaurant that topped our table was Wahaca, Mexican themed restaurant that's mainly in the southeast London area, but also has outposts in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Brighton. And actually it did really well in our survey. And it has some really, really great policies. So for example, it serves free range chicken, which actually for a chain restaurant is quite rare. It also serves free range pork and all their eggs are free range, all its fishes, MSC certified. So all these things mean that it's you know, they're sourcing policies, they take real pride and interest in where they're sourcing their food from that really interesting thing about them as well is that on their menus, they sign post carbon emissions for their meals. So as a customer going in, you can look at the carbon emissions for that meal. And their signpost is as high, medium or
Speaker 1 23:01
low. Very good. And who else is at the top there. Okay,
Speaker 4 23:05
so second in our survey was Nando's. And actually, that might be quite surprising to people. But again, they have a really interesting business model. And I suppose it's quite a streamlined menu that they offer. So actually, yeah, chicken and some side. But actually, that means they can be really conscious about their sourcing policies for the ingredients that they have. So actually, for a business, its size, it has low energy and water use. It also has really good policies regarding waste, so none of its waste or food waste goes to landfill. The business also has really great policies for sourcing Sustainable Palm Oil. Obviously, it uses a lot of soya beans in the feed for its chickens. So it sources those responsibly as well. And also all of its staff received sustainability training.
Speaker 3 23:58
And can you explain a bit more about the different levels of sourcing, because I suppose you can ask a restaurant where it gets its ingredients. But then there are there are issues with the supply chain, which we may not be privy to that it's harder to understand. Is that right? Yeah.
Speaker 4 24:13
And of course, actually, a lot of these restaurants have huge supply chains, and they're sourcing their ingredients from a lot of different places. So what we looked at was okay, for ingredients that we know can be slightly problematic from an environmental perspective or a welfare perspective. So let's take fish for example. So if a menu or a restaurant has fish on its menu, then we would say okay, well what are your policies to ensure that you're sourcing that correctly? So is it MSC certified? If it's farmed fish, you know, is that aquaculture stewardship certified or is it RSPCA certified? So there are different certification schemes, and we use those as a saw I in for awarding schools, for example. And there's a scale obviously, if someone served organic produce, then that was the gold standard. So actually, a lot of chains do serve organic milk, for example. So pret all of the milk that they serve is organic, which is great. With things like palm oil, soya, tea, coffee, we know that there are issues with either deforestation or maybe labor. So we ensure we awarded scores if someone told us that they were sourcing fair trade or Rainforest Alliance approved products.
Speaker 1 25:36
Okay. I mean, it's interesting, the trend for a lot of restaurants to boast about not using frozen food, that must kind of great a little bit.
Speaker 2 25:46
It does. And I think, especially if they've got a lot of waste. Yeah. And actually, if they're using, you know, really, you want some restaurants that are proud of the fact that they're using frozen produce to ensure that they're minimizing their waste, that they've got flexibility around the dishes they can serve, because they've got that variety there. So yeah, I think the more that we can, you know, champion, the fact that actually, there is no shame in frozen, frozen.
Speaker 4 26:11
I wasn't aware of that. But actually, I find that really incredible, especially if you're thinking about fruit and veg was actually frozen can often have higher levels of nutrients in it than fresh. So there's no shame in using frozen produce. Well, if we're talking about shame,
Speaker 1 26:25
who was at the bottom of our rankings, okay,
Speaker 4 26:28
so I'm gonna say no shame. Actually, out of the 28 restaurants we approach most were really good and did engage with us and fill out our surveys. And there was a handful of restaurants that didn't engage with us. And those were five guys Hungry Horse, pizza, express, Subway, tgi fridays, and yo sushi. So actually, they either didn't respond, or they said they weren't going to fill out the survey. And actually there, I think there's some shame, because consumers want to know these things. You know, we've surveyed people, they told us, they want restaurants to behave more responsibly in terms of environmental impact. So by them not sharing their information, they're really withholding that their customers at the bottom of our table were KFC and Greg's. But actually, the reason they came bottom was not because they're particularly bad, it's because they didn't or weren't able to share key data with us. And that, for example, might be on food waste, or energy usage or water usage. So we obviously couldn't give them marks for things that we didn't know. But actually, I wouldn't say that they were a bottom. And I wouldn't say they should be shaped.
Speaker 1 27:42
And how important you think it is in the great scheme of, you know, our own food waste at home, but also generally everyone trying to be a sustainable consumer, how big of an impact do you think restaurants have,
Speaker 4 27:55
they have a huge impact. If you think about their food chains, where they're sourcing their food from the production of that food, then then transporting it. Then running their restaurants, for example, with fast food chains, or what we traditionally think of as fast food, quick service restaurants. 99% of their emissions come from their food chain. So it's a huge amount. So actually, if you think about the businesses in our survey, they contribute 1000s Millions of tons of carbon emissions to the environment every year. So they do have a responsibility. And as a consumer, there's a you know, there are things you can do when you're eating out as well. You can choose where you're eating, you can choose what you're ordering, but also you can make sure you don't over order. And if you do over order, then take that food home in a doggie bag, so it's not going to waste. And
Speaker 1 28:51
Kate if you take food home in the doggie bag, you over order on a Chinese, what is the status of that food? Is it freezable?
Speaker 2 28:59
This is one of the ones that breaks my heart a little because the answer is sometimes. So if you've gone somewhere and you know that the food has been cooked fresh, and it's not been reheated, then yeah, you could probably freeze it and reheat it. I've done it with pizza. I've actually done it with fish and chips as well from my local fish and chip shop. I know they cook it all fresh. But if you have something like a Chinese takeaway, where especially if it's a dish that actually requires reheating, so if you've got egg fried rice, that rice is going to have been cooked. And then it's going to have been reheated to make the egg fried rice. And we shouldn't really be reheating food more than once. Especially the fact that you don't know the circumstances in the kitchen of where it's been prepared. So from a food safety perspective, I would always say exercise some caution think about has this food likely been reheated already. If so, as you said, try not to over order. Sometimes a bit food waste can't be helped, but If we can freeze it, then definitely go for it and just reheat it thoroughly afterwards.
Unknown Speaker:I think there's something to be said for cold leftovers, though.
Unknown Speaker:You're telling us to eat for breakfast? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker:absolutely do that.
Speaker 3 30:13
Well on a slightly classier note than pizza for breakfast, I've actually been having a chat with Mark Selby. He's the co founder of what hacker to find out what they've been doing that's earn them that coveted which Ico provider label. So Mark Selby, co founder of what hacker, it's so good to have you here. Firstly, why is sustainability important to you?
Speaker 5 30:35
We set up the business back in 2007. And very much from the off, we determined we want to prove that you could build and scale a truly sustainable restaurant business. So from the beginning, we always challenged ourselves every year to be as sustainable as we can
Speaker 3 30:52
and and what does that actually look like then in your restaurants. It starts from
Speaker 5 30:57
the way we build our restaurants. So we now build our restaurants to a what's called a scar level gold, which is an external independent assessment of the way we build our restaurants. And we always get the top rating. And that's always our kind of benchmark. And that means things like not putting water boilers in it. It means using heat both coming off the extract from the grills and also heat being produced by condensers. In fridges, that goes to heat water that then goes into the losing the taps rather than having these water boilers constantly on. It's the paint, even when we get graffiti artists winces as environmentally friendly paints, through to furniture sourcing all of these things in terms of the build, and then we've got the actual menu itself. So we very much do two things. One is we look at our sourcing. So we work with some local suppliers like hotma, DODDS Riverford, organic, all of our chicken is free range, our pork is free range of beef is outdoor red. So we're very careful and selective in terms of how we source things. And then linked to that as well. We've actually shifted our menu over the years because obviously, the biggest component parts of carbon emissions are beef and meat in general, I should say, beef being the worst, but meat and dairy. So we've not in an aggressive way. But just in an informative way, we've slowly shifted our menu to be roughly 50, well, a bit more 50% vegetarian. And what we're very keen to do is we're not there to dictate or preach to our customers. So we don't say you must do this, or that we basically seek to inform and we offer everything, but by doing that we have delicious veg dishes. And we also have delicious meat dishes. And slowly, what we've seen is people evolve and try different things. And then we have a head of sustainability. We sit down every month. And we really challenge ourselves. So what is there out there more than we could be doing? How can we go about it? Who do we need to work with? And that's a really exciting bit of the business as well.
Speaker 3 32:54
And how much extra resource does it take for you to be sustainable? Is there a cost attached to all of this? There
Speaker 5 33:01
is a cost? Yeah, I mean, from having someone as our head of Sustainability, for example, to I think we're just opening a site in Paddington in mid April, I think, probably the extra cost of fitting that out, it's probably 50 to 100,000 pounds, somewhere around that depending on where you move things around. But for us, and part of our DNA is very much driven by that. So it's something that we factor into the overall business model.
Speaker 3 33:27
And how much do you think the onus should be on the consumer to make more environmentally friendly choices when they're in a restaurant?
Speaker 5 33:35
I think it has to be on the consumer or the government. I don't believe in being a business, as I said earlier that preaches to people I don't think anyone wants to go in somewhere and be preached to. So what we try to do is put all the information out there, try and educate, give detail. If someone wants to come in and have a heavy meat sort of special occasion, then we're not going to stop them. And we're going to celebrate that with them as well. I think the consumer are slowly becoming more aware of things. I think ultimately government again, have to get involved if we're going to properly really influence people because everyone's slipped back in the habit thing. So it doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker 3 34:12
I'm just interested that you are zero landfill. So where does your food waste go? And how do you manage that
Speaker 5 34:18
our food waste again, it's something we've always been very focused on. So less than 1% of our of our total food is wasted. And the vast majority of that 1% is actually things like avocados, skins, avocados, things that you literally can't do anything with all of that 99% of that in our restaurant and 99% of the 1% is put into food recycling and then goes into be anaerobically digested so becomes compost effectively. So we have a very clean system on that. And with regards to the restaurant, everyone is very focused on not having waste things like doggy bags, but pretty much not Yeah, as I said 99% will go into sort of a compostable or then which will be taken off by our suppliers and turned into compost. So yeah, and with our head chefs we bonus and incentivize them on their food waste to be below that 1% threshold. It is a very important thing for us in the business.
Speaker 3 35:13
Well, Mark, it was great to talk to you, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Unknown Speaker:Thanks so much for having me really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 35:18
A lot of talk about responsibility there as consumers, restaurants, what they can do government as well. But I think supermarkets have a bit of a role in this. I love that some providers of mint for example, they package it in a container, which for me is a bit of a lazy person very easy to check that into the freezer rather than a plastic tub. Is there anything that you think supermarkets could probably do manufacturers could do to make it easier for people to waste less food?
Speaker 2 35:46
Yeah, I mean, definitely providing better advice on freezing on the packaging. I mean, I might do myself out of a job here. But often you'll get foods that will say they're not suitable for freezing. And often it's a quality issue, not a safety issue. So it might be that it can't be frozen and defrosted and eaten as you would use it. But for example, yogurt, but you could freeze it in cubes and chuck it in a smoothie. So you you've changed the way that you use the foods and I understand that can be difficult for supermarkets and food manufacturers. But we are seeing brands of supermarkets that are putting labels highlighting this food can be frozen. I've seen it in m&s. You know, so the more that supermarkets can communicate about freezing and about the difference between us buys and best befores we've obviously seen a lot of best befores being removed, we've seen some use buys changing to best before some products, like yogurts, so I think the more that you know, we can be supported in making the food last as long as possible at home is really really valuable. And you know, considering that with people who live on their own as well. So giving that flexibility about being able to choose loops, and you know, not have to buy massive bulk or if you are buying bulk, then obviously learn how to freeze it. Well
Speaker 1 37:00
on that note, that is all we got time for this week. Thank you so much both you for coming in. It has been fantastic. Obviously, there are 1,000,001 different things to freeze. You've got all information on how to do that case, on your channels. Where can we find you at
Speaker 2 37:14
the full freezer on pretty much any social media but Instagram is my main home, really?
Unknown Speaker:And you've got a book coming out? Is that right? When's that going to be out?
Speaker 2 37:21
I do. It's the 14th of March pre orders are available. They are absolutely Shefalee.
Unknown Speaker:Kate, thank you so much for joining us.
Unknown Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker 1 37:31
Next episode, we're going to be heading into the great outdoors. Where are the best places to buy your camping kit? And how can you avoid being left with all the gear but no idea? Grace? What's happening on the money pod this week? Well,
Speaker 3 37:42
it's the hottest day in the money pot calendar this week. It is of course the spring budget. We'll be reacting and analyzing everything you need to know about the contents of Jeremy hunts Redbox. Do hit subscribe if you're not already so that you'll be notified as soon as it's released. And
Speaker 1 37:59
as usual if you'd like to get in touch with us before then we're at which UK on Instagram, Facebook, tick tock and X or you can drop us an email at podcast at which dot credit UK and
Speaker 3 38:09
like Harry mentioned earlier if you are able to leave us a rating and a review, it will really help us grow and will be forever grateful.
Speaker 1 38:15
Today's get answers was presented by me, Harry Kind, alongside Grace Forell, produced by Rob Lilley-Jones and recorded by Adrian Bradley and edited by Eric Bria and thanks again to our wonderful guests, Kate Hall, Shefalee Loth and Mark Selby. We'll see you next time. Bye bye bye.