Linking sustainability to healthy eating

We are excited to be focusing on sustainability for 2019 Healthy Week, aiming to prioritise your personal health, as well as the health of the planet.

As part of our sustainability strategy, we are aiming to encourage customers to eat more plant-based and plant-focussed meals. With the help from Student Sustainability Architect, Kathryn Warner, this Healthy Week 2019 we hope to inspire our customers to eat more fruit and veg, and enjoy meals where vegetables are the main component, rather than an afterthought. This is important for getting our 5 a day and looking after the planet.

 

Why is it important to reduce meat consumption?

  • Climate Change: the FAO estimates that livestock production is responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Water use: considerably more water is used to produce a meat-based meal than a plant-based one. For example, it takes 15,500 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef, compared to 250 litres for 1kg potatoes.
  • Land use: more agricultural land is used to raise cattle than all other crops and domesticated animals combined.

 

For Healthy Week 2019 we are offering:

  • Free fruit with every vegan meal purchased in The Refectory
  • Vegan meals only served on the Green & Go counter
  • Street Food Hut outside the Refectory serving fresh vegan meals
  • Free porridge to those who cycle to work with the presentation of a cycling helmet

 

Visit the Refectory and our Street Food Hut outside the Students’ Union between the 17th-21st June to get yourself a delicious plant-based meal!

Reduce – Reuse

The Refectory now serves all of its counter food in compostable or recyclable packaging. This year we have already saved over 40,000 single-use plastic salad bowls from landfill. If you choose to, you can now bring your own containers to The Refectory, and ask our staff to serve your meal in containers you already own.

#plasticfree2020

Find out more about Healthy Week and become a Healthy Week Hero!

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GFAL Options

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An Interview with Too Good To Go

Here at Great Food at Leeds we’re passionate about making a difference to the environment and to our community, and we hope to encourage our customers to do so too!

We work closely with our sustainability colleagues on a variety of different initiatives – we sell Fairtrade products across our outlets and support local suppliers, sourcing 70% of our food from within 60 miles of the University. We’re also working hard to battle waste on campus by promoting KeepCups in all our outlets, encouraging our customers to use reusable cups and rewarding them with 10p off any hot drink when they do.

In addition, last year we introduced the Too Good To Go initiative at The Refectory and in the Business School Café. Helping to reduce food waste by offering surplus food at a cheaper cost, the concept has saved over 2 million meals so far – that’s the equivalent to avoiding 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, the same as the energy required to power 324 homes for an entire year!

The founders of the Too Good To Go scheme are University of Leeds alumni, so we thought it was only right to get in touch with the team to find out a little bit more about them and how the idea started…

Where did the initial idea for Too Good To Go come from?

Chris and Jamie (Too Good to Go founders, pictured below) met when they shared a flat in Henry Price halls at the University of Leeds in 2010. In 2013 they first became truly aware of the food waste problem when they were catering for an event. Chris went on to set up Too Good To Go in 2015 after graduating with a masters in international business at Leeds with the help of Spark – the University Careers Centre’s dedicated team who support starting up and running a business.

“The fact that the University of Leeds catering outlets have now joined the food waste revolution is a source of great pride for the two co-founders”

After launching the site and getting going, Chris and Jamie met a few Danish guys who were wanting to address the same issue in Scandinavia. From sharing the same passion for addressing this global issue they joined forces and created the app that we see today!

“The app was founded with a mission to place the lost value back onto food as something that should be eaten and not thrown away”

What started out as a solution to tackling food waste in the hospitality industry has developed into a platform to significantly reduce food waste in retail and restaurants too, with over 1,000 businesses having saved food through Too Good To Go in its first year.

Then where did it go from there?

Chris and the team launched the Too Good To Go app in Leeds in June 2016. Two months later they launched in London and since then the project continued to gather momentum – it is now active in six countries with almost 2.5 million users combining to rescue over 2 million meals from heading to landfill.

“We’re trying to use Too Good To Go as a vehicle to catalyse public discussion on the subject of food waste”

The app was founded with a mission to place the lost value back onto food as something that should be eaten and not thrown away. It’s a response to the harrowing fact that as a global society, we carelessly throw away over one-third of the food we produce at the same time as watching one billion people go to bed hungry every night. We’re trying to highlight that food is food – our most valuable resource of energy – and not a mere consumer commodity.

We’re trying to use Too Good To Go as a vehicle to catalyse public discussion on the subject of food waste. Whilst the Too Good To Go app encourages users to consume ‘waste’ with the goal of getting the message across that in a lot of cases, what we perceive to be waste isn’t actually waste at all, it’s perfectly good food that just gets thrown in the bin because there’s nobody around to eat it.

“Food waste is a global epidemic, and if we can help to raise awareness of that then we’ve achieved something”

What does it mean to To Good To Go to have the University of Leeds on-board?

Having met in Leeds and lived there for a number of years together, it was always Chris and Jamie’s goal to be able to give something back to the community – not just the students but to the locals too. The fact that the University of Leeds catering outlets have now joined the food waste revolution is a source of great pride for the two co-founders who reflect upon their time at Leeds with great fondness! Add to that the support that Too Good To Go has received from Spark, and there is great reason to see Leeds as their spiritual home.

Where do you hope Too Good To Go will go from here?

Having so recently launched in the UK we’re currently focusing on tackling restaurant food wastage here. However, we are getting emails every day from people as far out as Brazil and Singapore to bring Too Good To Go to them – so who knows what the future has in store! Food waste is a global epidemic, and if we can help to raise awareness of that then we’ve achieved something.

Our ultimate goal is to turn Too Good To Go into a waste management platform that allows restaurants to control their supply better, eliminating any possibility of food waste at source and eventually making the platform redundant!

If you could market Too Good To Go to Leeds students in one sentence, what would you say?

We have written you a poem instead…

Students of the Uni of Leeds,
Take a second to listen please:
For here comes news you don’t want to miss,
Way more exciting than last night’s drunken kiss!
Too Good To Go is live on campus,
Here are some reasons why you probably want to thank us:
Get Refectory food for less than three quid,
So much food you can barely close the lid.
You won’t believe how good it will taste,
Especially considering it was destined to be waste,
So download Too Good To Go from your app store now,
And take home enough food to make your flatmates say wow!

 

Food offering in The Refectory and the Business School Café at the University ranges from salads, sandwiches, jacket potatoes and daily hot specials. Download the Too Good To Go app and place your order for collection from The Refectory between 7-7.15pm (10 meals available daily) and the Business School Café between 2.30-2.40pm (five meals available daily).

Keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages for updates on Too Good To Go coming to more outlets across the University.

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Proud to support Too Good to Go App

We are proud to announce we have partnered with Too Good To Go, the innovative new app and social enterprise that aims to put an end to food waste in the hospitality industry. Following in the footsteps of some key players in catering across Leeds, such as Yo Sushi and Rola Wala.

The partnership sees us introduce the Too Good To Go app in two of our outlets, The Business School and The Refectory. This will help reduce food waste on campus at the university, by providing a platform to show what surplus food is available to students and staff at a cheaper cost before it goes out of date.

You can place an order using the app and collect your food before closing time. Food offering ranges from salads, sandwiches, jacket potatoes and daily hot specials. In the Business School Café you can pick up your order anytime between 2.30pm-2.40pm and in The Refectory you can collect your order between 7pm-7.15pm.

“We are so pleased to be able to work alongside Too Good To Go on such a great initiative. At Leeds, sustainability is at the forefront of what we do, and food waste pays a huge part in this for us as a Catering service. This partnership is a step forward in reducing food waste across campus, whilst creating an innovative platform to offer staff and students a way to access quality food at a reduced price. We are very excited to launch in The Refectory” – Julie Tong, Head of Retail Catering at GFAL.

We will have up to 15 meals a day available on campus, ranging from salads, sandwiches, jacket potatoes, daily hot specials and many more other menu items.

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