Good Food Enterprise Charter
Do you want some guidance on taking action? Read about the Good Food Enterprise Charter.
Good Food Enterprise Charter
This information helps businesses make small changes to increase their customer base, include healthier and climate-friendly options, and reduce their waste.
We included four areas where businesses can take action.
Each area has a list of actions businesses could take and also links where you can find further information.
1. Purchasing sustainable ingredients and products
- Choose seasonal ingredients and change part of your menu/stock to reflect what’s in season.
- Serve/sell higher welfare meat, dairy and eggs, sustainably sourced fish and organic/Fairtrade ingredients. Choose from a recognised quality assurance scheme e.g. Marine Stewardship Council, Red Tractor.
- Increase vegetarian and vegan options on menus and have one or two meat-free days per week.
- Replace some meat in burgers, sausages and meat-based sauces with vegetarian options, such as beans, pulses or tofu. (Preparing your own costs less than buying ready-made vegetarian products.)
- Purchase/sell produce grown in the borough or London, preferably using organic production methods… or grow some of your own!
- Purchase/sell ingredients from local market traders, independent retailers and wholesalers.
Quality assurance labels
Local and seasonal
2. Providing for a diverse range of customers
- Talk to customers about what they want to see on the menu/for sale and stock more of those items.
- Diversify your menus by offering foods from different cultures and communities. Get ideas by from your staff and customers and consider stocking/offering foods that are popular during cultural/religious festivals.
- Promote the NHS Healthy Start scheme, allowing eligible people to purchase milk and/or fruit and vegetables using a prepaid card.
- Consider how you can offer a range of price points on your menus. For example, prepare a simple, one-pot daily special using fewer ingredients and offer at a lower cost than other items on your menus.
Healthy Start
3. Offering healthier products and menus
- Place less healthy foods – products high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) – away from tills, checkouts and entrances and do not offer volume price promotions on HFSS products.
- Offer water to buy at the counter or a free water refill point.
- Offer more nourishing and higher-fibre snacks and puddings such as fruit and always include a side of vegetables or salad with a meal.
- Offer wholewheat pasta and multigrain breads, including seeds and/or different grains; limit refined/white products.
- Consider allergens when creating menus – include allergen-free alternatives.
- Make smaller portions available on request.
4. Reducing food waste
- Redistribute surplus food. Connect with local food banks and community food projects, or join Too Good to Go, an app that links individuals or organisations wanting surplus food with businesses and organisations that have it.
- Avoid single-use packaging, dispose of unavoidable food waste correctly and recycle correctly.
- Install a compost bin for food waste or join a local composting network.
- Install a refill area where customers can purchase dried goods and bring their own packaging; or sell ‘pound bowls of produce needing to be used quickly.
- Preserve foods that would otherwise go to waste and include in your menus e.g. by pickling or fermenting or making stock using peelings.
Downloadable PDF
Here is the original, PDF version of the information on this page if you prefer to download it: