The Small Print

As COP17 reaches its conclusion in Armenia, progress towards meeting a global commitment to halt and reverse nature's decline by 2030 remains off track. To help speed up action, the Nature Positive Initiative has launched a new set of common, global metrics designed to make measuring changes in nature simpler and more consistent for businesses. It boils down more than 600 existing metrics into jus...

Employees from ethnic minority backgrounds are still being denied the same opportunities to build successful careers in hospitality as their white counterparts. That’s one of the key messages behind a new campaign from Be Inclusive Hospitality which seeks to help employers build fairer, more inclusive workplaces that will ultimately drive stronger business performance. The ‘Better Hospitality’ cam...

Boards are neither asking the right questions to understand the risk the food industry is facing from shocks to the system, nor allocating the time, energy or budget to materially reduce that risk. This was just one of a series of damning statements made by a group of anonymous industry insiders who returned this month with a fresh warning that current supply chains will not be resilient in the fa...

Emily Coon is part of a new generation of sustainability professionals working to build long-term resilience into the bones of businesses. Soon to leave her role at St Austell Brewery to join the pub group, Fuller's, Emily joins Nick to discuss the changing nature of sustainability roles and responsibilities within the food and hospitality sectors, and the qualities this generation of leaders will...

Sodexo bucked the wider hospitality sector trend in 2025 by hitting its target to cut food waste by 50%, five years ahead of the SDG 12.3 and UK Food & Drink Pact targets. To mark International Day for Food Loss and Waste on September 29th, Claire Atkins-Morris, sustainability director for Sodexo UK & Ireland, talks Nick through the strategy that has underpinned the caterer’s food waste re...

The stage was set at Barnsgrove, near Basingstoke in Hampshire last week for the inaugural Footprint Festival. Professionals from across the worlds of business, policy, civil society and academia came together to explore the Future of Sustainable Innovation in Foodservice & Hospitality. And what a memorable two days it was, with a programme packed full of speaker sessions, presentations, works...

How can government and businesses help farms reduce their climate impact, while balancing priorities like profitability, resilience, food production and nature? This question was at the heart of a series of conversations held with farmers across England over the summer by the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission – a piece of work commissioned by Defra to help inform the government’s forthcom...

In the week when the secretary of state, Angela Eagle, advised households to keep buffer stocks of several days’ worth of food and water, the independent watchdog said Defra should do more to strengthen food supply chain resilience to major disruptions. In a new report, the National Audit Office said the department has taken some steps to improve its preparedness in recent years, but has not done...

There can be few ingredients more essential to the hospitality and foodservice sector than the humble onion. From its role as the basis for soups and sauces, to its use as a standalone ingredient in burgers, stir fries and all manner of other dishes, the onion is one ingredient chefs cannot do without. Yet onion growers have just experienced their most challenging season ever following a summer of...

Serving food and drink in reusable cups and containers is one of the most impactful ways businesses can reduce packaging waste, improve resource efficiency and embed the principles of a circular economy. Yet adoption of reuse systems at scale remains low, with logistical and cost barriers often seen as insurmountable. Compass Group is showing what’s possible in the UK & Ireland by rolling out...

It's well-evidenced that serving more plant-rich dishes is an effective way for foodservice operators to reduce the climate impact of their food offer. The World Resources Institute works with organisations via its Coolfood initiative to deploy tools and techniques that empower consumers to choose more sustainable meal options. It recently published new guidance that looks beyond the behavioural s...

The annual Groundswell Festival of regenerative agriculture took place at Lannock Farm in Hertfordshire last week. In this week's bite-sized episode, Nick shares his key takeaways from the 10th staging of the event which speak to the trajectory of the regenerative movement, the tensions that still exist within it, and what it all means for farmers and businesses. In particular, Nick highlights gro...

As experts continue to question the resilience of the UK’s food system amid geopolitical turmoil and weather extremes, Canada has forged ahead with developing a new national food security strategy. The document explicitly positions food security as national security and sets out how Canada plans to assert greater control over its food supply through investment in domestic production and infrastruc...

In Monday’s Footprint In Focus feature we explored the implications of a new government-backed plan to triple the level of surplus food being redistributed to those in need. The plan has been pitched as an opportunity to turn the environmental problem of surplus food into a social opportunity. But it’s also raised concern that food redistribution risks being conflated with food security amid a sur...

The UK Government has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 87% by 2040 as part of its seventh carbon budget. Yet comprehensive plans to decarbonise agriculture and land use remain conspicuously absent from policy papers, with food production on track to become the UK’s largest source of emissions by 2050. In this week’s episode, Ruth Westcott from the charity Sustain joins Nick to discuss...

The cold chain describes the collection of businesses responsible for keeping temperature-controlled goods like meat, dairy and fresh produce moving safely and efficiently through supply chains: from source all the way through to restaurant kitchens and supermarket shelves. Trade body the Cold Chain Federation is concerned about growing risks to the chain from a range of threats including targeted...

Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions account for the lion’s share of the total for the average foodservice business. These are the emissions buried within food and drink supply chains that can be difficult to capture and measure in a consistent way. WRAP has taken on the task of creating a voluntary set of protocols for how food and drink businesses should report their scope 3 emissions. It has just p...

New research from the campaign group Action on Salt & Sugar has revealed worrying levels of salt in some of the UK’s most popular sandwiches sold by high street food-to-go brands and retailers. It’s now two years since the deadline passed for food businesses to meet voluntary salt reduction targets and still the government has failed to publish its report on industry progress. In the meantime,...

The humble soybean plays a major role in powering the global food system as a key source of animal feed. But with industry targets for sourcing verified deforestation- and conversion-free soy having been missed, and with the landmark Amazon Soy Moratorium on the brink of collapse, is sustainable soy still within reach for UK food businesses? In this week’s episode, Nick speaks with Jonathan Gorman...

The Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW) ranks 149 leading food companies, including many in the hospitality and foodservice sector, on their policies, practices and performance. This year’s report highlights pockets of good progress, including a UK-led reduction in reliance on animal-sourced foods, yet overall food companies are struggling to match ambition with action on farm animal...

School food standards in England are set for their first overhaul in over a decade following the publication of a government consultation. Ministers say the current standards are out of date and want to align them with the latest health guidance to ensure children are getting the nutritious food they need. But how effective a lever for change can standards alone be? In this week’s episode of The S...

Scotland has the ambition for high quality, nutritious food to be available to everyone as set out in the Good Food Nation Act. In this week’s episode of The Small Print, Jayne Jones, chief executive of the newly launched Scottish Food Commission, tells Nick Hughes how this landmark piece of legislation can help break down the barriers to food systems change and the role of the Commission in suppo...

Mike Barry has been working at the coal face of food sustainability for several decades, as the architect of Marks & Spencer’s pioneering Plan A strategy and most recently as co-founder of food systems consultancy Planeatry Alliance. In this week’s episode of The Small Print, Mike shares with Nick Hughes his vision for a future-fit food system in which businesses and policy makers have created...

A new Netflix documentary, The Plastic Detox, has questioned the link between infertility and human exposure to microplastics. In this week’s episode of The Small Print, Nick Hughes is joined by Pierre Paslier, who worked as a plastics packaging engineer before co-founding the Earthshot prize winning start-up Notpla, which makes packaging out of seaweed. In a wide-ranging conversation they discuss...

A new NGO-led campaign is calling on the UK Government to deliver a Good Food Bill. Supporters say that only by having food system targets written into legislation can they withstand a continuous cycle of political change and provide long-term stability for businesses and investors. In this week’s episode, Nick Hughes speaks to Anna Taylor of The Food Foundation, a driving force behind the campaig...