'Origin Green helps us to make more sustainable business decisions'
Origin Green is Ireland’s national food sustainability programme. It is a voluntary programme led by Bord Bia that brings together farmers, food producers, retailers and food-service operators with the common goal of sustainable food production. This month we speak with Kate Lyons, Commercial and Sustainability Manager at Artizan Food Co.
What is the background of your business?
Artizan Food Co. was established in 2005, when our founder Jeananne O’Brien set up a gourmet deli in Dublin. We have evolved a lot since then, and are now a leading corporate catering company in the Dublin market, operating in-house restaurants and snack programmes for Twitter, Stripe, Avolon, Facebook and others. In April last year, we successfully launched a new consumer business, Eatto. We produce a range of handmade frozen meals, delivered directly to the consumer. All produce is Irish where possible, and all produce is delivered in compostable and or recyclable packaging.
Why did Artizan Food Co. get involved with Origin Green?
Sustainability has always been a core value of ours but until Origin Green, we did not have a way of validating this. We are proud to be members and the robust independent verification process validates our membership, our drive for sustainability and our credentials.
What achievements have you made in your Origin Green plan?
We have a production kitchen of 26,000 square feet which was designed and built in 2015, with sustainability and energy savings in mind. Origin Green focuses the mind and helps us to make more sustainable and efficient business decisions. Our packaging is now either fully recyclable or compostable, and we have also moved to offering our in-house snack ranges in bulk to reduce the packaging used. Our waste has been significantly reduced, and all our food waste is now composted. We added 5,400 square feet of solar panels to the roof of our production kitchen, reducing our energy consumption significantly, and we have introduced two electric cars to our fleet.
What challenges has the pandemic brought to Artizan Food Co. as a food-service company?
Given the clients we work with, we felt the impact of Covid immediately. We quickly turned our focus to using our kitchens to helping charities around Dublin and to focus on our sister company, Eatto.ie. Many clients came on board to support us with charity donations and with their help, we have – to date – donated over 75,000 meals to various Dublin-based charities. Unfortunately, Covid has led to increased use of single-use packaging. Thankfully, all our packaging is either compostable or recyclable, and I look forward to when we can eliminate this requirement for good.
Have these challenges led to changes in your Sustainability Strategy?
We think Covid will help our sustainability drive and make it easier to get people on board with our message. Eatto.ie supplies high-end, quality frozen meals that are delivered nationwide, and the influence of Origin Green has helped us to fine-tune our food offering to providing the best quality finished meals we can.
We use all Bord Bia approved Irish meat and poultry and Irish ingredients where they are available. The packaging was also influenced by our Origin Green strategy, in the selection of compostable food trays and film. As Eatto is a frozen-food product, the insulated packing had to be sustainable and to this end, natural sheep’s wool is used. It is significant that these elements of our packaging receive favourable comments from our clients.
To find out more about the Origin Green programme, visit origingreen.ie