I was lucky enough to be invited to Restaurant magazine's R150 last week, a gathering of the top restuarants in the UK, to hear restauranteurs talk about their experiences on the front line and also to introduce them to the Sustainable Restaurant Association, a new venture in which Good Business is involved (see here for the Guardian's take on the SRA)

There was lots of interesting comment but the talk which remained with me was from Simon Kossof, the Carluccios boss. He recounted the journey that the chain had been on to find both a charity partner and donation mechanism which worked for the business. After several false starts they had alighted on Action against Hunger which works with families in over 40 of the world's poorest counties to help feed children and build sustainable futures. working with Action Against Hunger had worked, where other partnerships had failed, because it was relevant and therefore engaged both employees and customers alike.

The second issue of the donation mechanism also needed several goes to get right. It started off as a 50pence cover charge on the bill but customer feedback quickly showed that this blanket policy was too demanding. The solution was to add the same charge to only one dish on the menu, allowing customers to choose to participate or not. Carluccio’s has been working with the charity since 2007 and expects to reach a total donation of £500,000 this year, so it's definitely working.

The most interesting comment though, was that, while the direct benefits of charity support are obvious, it can be difficult to quantify what the benefits of community activities might be to a business. Simon concluded that the return was real, genuine and had wide ranging benefits, but couldn't prove it.

This desire, to quantify, either ex-post or ex-ante, what the return on a responsibility investment is/will be is cropping up more and more often and presents a real challenge to the industry. Isolating the effect of a community investment on identified business objectives such as building brand value or improving employee retention is extremely complex, but it seems like finding a working model to do so is essential if the industry is going to evolve.

Meat Free McDonald's?

Not sure if this blog should follow the last one. But here goes.

Today I was reminded of the reinvention that has been going on over recent years at McDonald's. As I was walking down Victoria Street in central London this morning my eyes were drawn to a new style McDonald's. Not only was there funky new seating, mood lighting and wifi, but what really caught my eye was the fresh flowers in vases on the tables.

Many might think that this is all just window dressing and nothing has really changed. In reality McDonald's has been a market leader on a huge number of social and environmental issues. Notable examples include all its eggs being free range, all its milk being organic, and independently recognised qualifications for its staff. And these are things that don't just happen overnight. These are changes that require time and serious investment.

Will they pay off in the long-run?

Well, when you read that Lord Stern (and many others) suggest that a vital part of reducing the impact of climate change will be reducing the amount of meat we eat, the future certainly does not look rosy. But my bet is that if there is one large scale fast food company that will adapt to the future it is Mcdonald's. Will meat come off the menu? Probably not. But as McDonald's has shown so far it is able to adapt to the changing societal and environmental issues it faces often before others have even spotted they are issues (it started on free range eggs in the UK over 7 years ago).

Will McDonald's make the grade for the Sustainable Restaurant Association - we shall see. But, if you accept fast food is going to be with us whether we like it or not, it can't be denied they are trying.

Sustainable Restaurant Association

Seen End of the Line or part of Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall’s Chicken Out campaign, interested in where your 12.5% service charge on your bill goes? Sustainability has never been such a powerful force in our decision making when deciding on how and where we would like to eat. Being a big fan of eating out and all things sustainable I was over the moon to start working on the Sustainable Restaurant Association a few months ago. Things have been moving fast and we are on our way to creating the UK’s first national association that aims to help restaurants take a holistic view of sustainability. Launching in February 2010 we have come across a host of positive and negative attitudes to trying to make UK hospitality global leaders in sustainability. Some seem to think it is too hard, too big, too many grey areas. Our response, if we have many restaurants doing the little things, getting involved and becoming knowledgeable about the impact they have on the environment and their community then all the better.

It is a confusing world of information out there, lots of groups, charities and associations trying to help in their own area. For your average restaurant owner or chef it is a minefield, what to go for, Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade or local and seasonal? Through expert advice, forums, events, outside organisations and our website we will bring together the latest information and research that can be practically adapted to restaurants.

Getting out there and meeting restaurants such as Leon, Alimentum, Moro and Barrafina we have seen a real passion for great food, great service and an amazing atmosphere, it is with this obsession to detail, that we hope sustainability becomes an important agenda for customers and operators alike.

You manage a brand. You have a product to promote. You sign up a celebrity. Simple. Or, if you prefer, you invent a character to promote your product (remember The Milky Bar Kid?). Easier to control, and less risk of him or her being photographed stumbling drunk out of Whisky Mist at 2 in the morning.

Or, if you're MTV, you take this idea and subvert it by creating a virtual celebrity to promote a cause rather than a product. So, welcome Cherry Girl. She aims to "show a lifestyle that is fun and fulfilling, and, as a by-product, happens to be sustainable", according to MTV's Head of Sustainability, Ian Jackson, whilst being "mischievous, rebellious, seductive, intriguing and hedonistic". So nothing like the Milky Bar Kid, then.

Building on MTV's Switch campaign, which communicates climate change messages through a variety of media, Cherry Girl inhabits a virtual world - through her blogs, tweets, MySpace page and Facebook profile. She extols the virtues of reusing and recycling (and cycling), and debates the issue of sustainable consumption, with a cool and slightly off-beat approach. All very web 2.0, with the emphasis firmly on dialogue and user involvement.

Cherry Girl Video from Cherry Girl on Vimeo.

It feels like an inspired idea - it engages the MTV audience through channels they understand and use everyday, it does it in a way that feels inspiring, contemporary and thoughtful rather than preachy, and it aligns with existing activity that's already up and running. 2,136 Facebook friends may not be enough to change the world, but it's worth remembering that MTV's long running Staying Alive campaign, promoting safe sex messages to youth globally, reached 800 million homes - that's 64% of homes with a television. They know what they're doing, and you've got to respect them for trying.

Bedtime story for sceptics

Interested to hear about this new advert from the Government’s Act on CO2 campaign, showing on primetime TV from today. The aim of the ad is to win over the remaining climate change sceptics (and persuade people of the immediacy and gravity of the challenge. It’s in direct response to some Department of Energy and Climate Change research showing that 52 per cent of people still don’t think climate change will significantly affect them. The ad itself – a bedtime story about a ‘very very strange world’ – is pretty sugary and ‘save the kids,’ but anything that helps to bring climate change from something abstract and futuristic that people think will never affect them, into something that people are moved to act on now, has my support.

Of course, it would be nice to think that we’d moved on from the argument on whether climate change is indeed a threat or not by now, towards actually doing something about it. Though from the somewhat crazed comments on the Times article (worth a read, if you find conspiracy theorists amusing), it looks like there’s still some way to go before the argument is won.

The dawn of the carbon police

WPP, the global engineering consultancy, has been trialling a new scheme to get employees to cut their personal carbon footprints (The Times). As part of this mini cap and trade scheme employees are given a personal emissions target - fines are handed out for every kg of CO2 emitted over the limit and, similarly, if they reduce their footprint they are rewarded.
The 'policing' of personal carbon footprints is the opposite of our approach to incentivising employees to reduce their footprints. Our programmes aim to engage, motivate and enable employees to make changes, in other words, the focus is on empowerment rather than force! This does not lessen the results and in the long term, the shcemes are likely to be more successful.
We also strive to avoid cultivating the 'offsetting' attitude, whereby employees make a change in one area of their life but fail to think about the environmental impacts of other actions. You have to feel sorry for the Managing Director of WPP, Stuart McLachlan, who cycled from Richmond to the City everyday but still got fined for his flight to South Africa. Should have opted for a 'staycation' Stuart!

What is feminism?

Last weekend a Butler in the Buff came to my flat, hen do of course. Today my mum viewed the photos on facebook (yes my mum’s on facebook). She sent me the following email in response “Feminism was supposed to make men and women equal in a good way - not to allow men and women both to wear lots of make up and pay others to appear semi-naked!”

This captured what seems to be a topic on the moment. Somewhere along the way feminism went wrong and the general consensus is that the young women of today don’t get it. The perceived liberation that we believe we have is overshadowing sexism, exploitation and inequality. Ouch.

Sure a few of you have read this article. My mum agrees with every word of it, I’m not so sure. Yes feminism needs to wake up but it also needs a bit of a rebrand. A PR campaign maybe to let young women know its not radical movement that rejects waxing but…I'm not entirely sure what. The need for women to remember to value themselves and strive for an equal standing maybe. A position that unfortunately we’ve not quite reached. But mum - it doesn't mean we can't enjoy our girly nights out and the latest GHDs in the mean time.