Every stage of food’s journey along the supply chain uses natural resources. Whether that is water, labour, energy or fuel, they all have a cost and those costs are both financial and environmental. Reducing the number of stages that food has to travel to reach your food/hospitality business is one simple and highly effective way to drive down costs and drive up sustainability.
Disruptions to food supply chains caused by the pandemic and recent geopolitical events in Eastern Europe have helped raise awareness of the complexity and fragility of our food chains. By shortening your supply chains, you can reduce your exposure to disruption and blockages, and strengthen relationships with local suppliers and growers.
You can also greatly reduce the packaging waste associated with protecting and preserving food over longer distances. WRAP estimates that the UK’s manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing sectors generate food and drink packaging waste worth £6.7bn¹ every year.
Selecting and building good working relationships with suppliers you really trust is an essential component in any supply chain. It’s a policy we have always followed at Olleco and our relationships with oil suppliers have helped us secure supplies of oil even during shortages.
There is a growing appetite for more sustainable supply chains
Consumers are now actively seeking out greener options in everything they buy and food is no exception. One global survey of over 7,000 respondents found that 43%² of people were prepared to pay more for meals from restaurants with visible sustainability practices.
Reacting to this trend, a growing number of restaurants are now providing carbon information for each option on their menu. This is proving extremely attractive to diners and a survey undertaken by a team from Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Würzburg³, revealed that diners tended to opt for the more environmentally-friendly choices on the menu.
Telling the full story of the ingredients on your menu helps reassure customers and should form a key element of your marketing to attract ever more conscious consumers.
From farm direct to fork
Dealing directly with growers is a great way to shorten your supply chain. Vast amounts of food are wasted before they even leave the farm gate because they don’t meet the superficial requirements of retailers or wholesalers. By liaising closely with food producers, you can help avoid this waste and reduce food costs.
You can also choose growers who are farming using more sustainable practices and build up a loyal, proactive relationship and influence the specific varieties they provide you with. This kind of local connection won’t just reduce the carbon miles for your ingredients, it will also enable you to guarantee freshness and flavour and reduce spoilage in transit.
Building this kind of strong local connection means that suppliers can keep you informed of any risks to your supply chain as they arise and reduce the risk of nasty surprises.
Send packaging packing
Packaging is a significant part of the food supply chain but one easy way to reduce its impact is to get suppliers to “backhaul” it. That simply means taking the used packaging back for recycling in the same vehicle they deliver your fresh produce. That way you cut the carbon impact of your deliveries and waste collection by 50%.
It is something we, at Olleco, offer all of our cooking oil customers and we go one better, by enabling customers to reuse the empty oil packaging to return used cooking oil which we will then recycle for them. We even supply specially designed funnels to make the process easy and spill-free.
Use the climate to protect the climate
Planning seasonal menus will help you make the most of what local suppliers can grow or forage and help reduce the carbon miles needed in your supply chain.
Invariably, buying “in season” also means buying cheaper so, once again, sustainability will help your budget go further.
Finding ways to preserve seasonal local produce by pickling, freezing, conserving or drying will help you extend those seasons and ensure that you make the most of everything that is on offer in your local environment.
Food without end
Food waste going to landfill is among the most damaging outcomes for the environment so it is essential that your efforts to improve your supply chain include what happens to the food you cannot use.
For unavoidable food waste, such as plate scrapings tea leaves or peelings and trimmings that can’t be used for stocks and flavouring, we believe the best possible outcome is to have it processed at an
anaerobic digestion (AD) plant.
That way, it can be used to generate renewable energy as well as organic fertiliser - making a contribution to reducing your carbon footprint still further - boosting the country’s energy security and reducing our reliance on artificial, energy-intensive fertilisers.
All of the
food waste we collect is processed at highly efficient AD plants around the country, reducing the miles it has to travel.
Think local
We’ve talked a lot about using local suppliers wherever possible. Shorter supply lines are less prone to disruption and involve fewer miles, less carbon and less cost.
While we are a national company, covering the whole of the UK, we are deeply aware of the importance of local connections and reducing miles travelled. We operate an extensive network of local depots to keep carbon miles to a minimum.
It also means we are less prone to delays and disruptions, and that our local employees can develop close working relationships with our customers. That local touch is something we’d advocate for all of your suppliers.
Summary:
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you create a more secure and sustainable food supply chain, we’d love to hear from you. Just fill in our quote builder and we’ll be in touch.
Sources:
¹ https://wrap.org.uk/taking-action/food-drink/sectors
² https://www.deliverect.com/en-gb/blog/deliverect/why-sustainability-is-crucial-to-restaurant-success-today-and-in-the-future
³ https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000028