The foodservice sector can play a key role in driving the transition to healthy, sustainable diets by enabling customers to choose options centred on plant-based ingredients.
A new report by WWF, published in partnership with Sodexo, sets out nine levers catering businesses can pull to help people eat meals rich in plants, including fruit, vegetables, pulses, and wholegrains, with only moderate amounts of meat.
The report concluded that customers cannot be nudged towards eating more sustainably unless “delicious, affordable, culturally appropriate, nutritious, and sustainable meals” are available on the menu.
It therefore suggests five “foundational enablers” upon which change can be built. These involve embedding sustainability and nutrition commitments and targets into organisational strategy; creating clear guidance for sustainable meals and menus; creating understandable core datasets; developing menus and recipe portfolios; and setting targets for recipe uptake, procurement and food waste.
Upon these foundations, three key categories of levers can be employed, according to the report. Staff engagement levers consist of culinary and front of house team training, and management and off site team training.
Value chain engagement levers involve alignment of commitments between food service providers and clients and designing contracts that support a sustainability agenda, for example by including specific sustainability criteria relating to the percentage of the menu that is plant-based, plant-forward and vegetarian.
Customer engagement levers, meanwhile, include recipe naming, positioning and presentation of different menu choices and environmental impact labelling.
The report also acknowledged the impact of external factors on a business’s ability to drive the dietary transition, specifically government policy and regulation, sector-wide changes, external partnerships and the influence of investors.
Individual organisations can show leadership through their policies, investments and actions, but collaboration with clients, where applicable, and across the sector will be needed to unlock transformation at pace and scale, according to WWF. It suggested, for example, that foodservice businesses could come together to agree on the terms used to describe sustainable meals given the plethora of different terms currently in use.
The report identified the most impactful actions that contracted foodservice providers can take to deliver the planning, production and uptake of more sustainable meals, however WWF said the majority of the levers can apply across all out of home organisations involved in foodservice provision.
