IT’S BEEN quite a year for foodservice. There have been the highs: the Responsibility Deals on health and waste to name but two. And there have been the lows: the tax avoidance scandal and the low prices paid to farmers for milk. As someone said to me just before Christmas: “If only we knew what next week’s headlines would be.”
Unfortunately we don’t, but as an industry we have a responsibility – a collective responsibility encompassing our businesses, our customers, our clients, our immediate neighbourhoods and our broader environs – to ensure that this year there’s more of the good than the bad.
If you read the Times on New Year’s Day, you’ll have seen that we’ve got off to a flyer, with Amanda Ursell highlighting the improvements being made in staff canteens to produce a “new army of fit, healthy and focused workers”. This burgeoning interest in “corporate nutrition” has got many in the business excited – not least us. By the time you read this we’ll have had the inaugural
Health & Vitality Honours. Sponsored by some of the biggest names in the sector, the honours aim to reward outstanding practice in contract catering. Later this year we’ll also have the third Footprint Awards, which recognise progress in every aspect of sustainability (environmental, ethical and social) in every corner of the foodservice and hospitality sector.
It promises to be another busy year for us all, so I hope you’ll be able to find the time, over a sustainably sourced cup of coffee with “fair price” milk, to read the magazine every month – yes, every month. Footprint is now monthly, so we can bring you essential best practice, topical analysis and thought-provoking features more often. And there’s the website for all the latest news too – hopefully filled with the headlines that show how this sector is taking sustainability more seriously than ever.
Here’s to a profitable, responsible and enjoyable 2013.
