Mark Linehan, outgoing managing director of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, reflects on his five years in the role and the changes he has seen across the sector. He discusses his fight to bring big brands on board and says that for those on the sustainability journey now is not the time to pause

The Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) launched nearly six years ago, with a handful of members and an idea to help the sector to look after its environmental and social responsibilities. It was the vision of restaurateurs Mark Sainsbury and Henry Dimbleby, and sustainability consultants Giles Gibbons and Simon Heppner; one that now sees nearly 6,000 restaurants and foodservice sites across the UK and abroad working with the SRA to be more sustainable. I joined the SRA as Managing Director in January 2011 and the organisation I leave over five years later is very different – not just because of the growth, but because of the diversity of the membership and how the sustainability landscape has changed in that time.

The challenge we’ve always faced is to avoid the perception that we just work with a cabal of like-minded ethical businesses. If we wanted to make a difference to our sector, we had to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty. Engaging with the big brands was the way forward, but wouldn’t that mean setting the bar so low that membership of the SRA would effectively be meaningless? Many people in the sustainability world have a natural aversion to big business, others believe it’s simply impossible for big business to operate responsibly. We believed that this is where the greatest opportunity for change lies, and we wanted to play our part in that. These are the kinds of dilemmas we face every day, but we’ve remained true to our original vision and never lost sight of what we were set up to do. Plus, we’re a pretty thick-skinned bunch…

It’s great to see things we were talking about and campaigning for five years ago, at the forefront of the sector now. In late 2010 we suspected the amount of food restaurants threw away needed looking at, so we carried out a fairly rudimentary bit of research with a number of our members. When, a few months later, we heard government officials quoting our figures we knew we were on to something. We ran our “doggy box” campaign, “Too Good to Waste”, in 2011 and – two government inquiries and a two-year food waste reduction programme for the Greater London Authority later – who would have thought French restaurants would be offering “gourmet bags” today, or that the Scottish government would have banned food waste going to landfill? Not to mention restaurants popping up like spring carrots, serving food that would otherwise have gone to waste.

The increasing prominence of food waste as an issue for the sector, mirrors what we’ve seen with a whole host of issues, and sustainability in general. Incidents and stories such as horse meat, tips and service charges, choosing tap water, the living wage and so on, have punctuated a journey in which the restaurant and food service sector has really started to address the issues that matter and do business in the “right way”. And, in many ways, that has been driven by those same large corporates that some criticised us for working with initially. Like their counterparts in other sectors, many have glossy CSER policies, backed up by reports proclaiming their achievements in looking after both the planet and their communities. Our role has been to use our “star rating” system to look into what they’re really doing, talk to their suppliers, check the evidence and report back. And then the hard work really starts, in helping them to get better and address some of those difficult challenges that really make a difference.

Don’t get me wrong, we love our smaller independent and single-site restaurant members. The innovation and passion they bring to sourcing, preparing and serving the very best produce is truly inspirational. From fish and chip shops with Marine Stewardship Council certification, to restaurants providing work experience and training to some of the most marginalised people in society, to becoming a Carbon Neutral restaurant, they always seem to be ahead of the curve.

Of course the question we’re always asked is whether customers really care about any of this, so we commission research regularly to find out what the dining public really think and, whilst what people say when being polled and how they actually spend their money don’t always match up, it’s clear that they do care. Recent research conducted for us by Hardens concludes that people valued a restaurant’s sustainability more than a 10% discount, and research from Abertay University reported that the satisfaction that comes from eating ethically produced food has a measurable impact on the enjoyment of that food’s taste and leaves the consumer wanting more.

The difficult bit is the fact that the issues our fickle dining public actually cares about changes from year to year, and significantly so. One year sustainable fish tops the list, then it’s organic, then it’s food waste and so on, making it difficult to predict what issue will rise to the top next. The solution? Take care of business across the board, of course. This might sound glib, but the same Harden’s research revealed that 95% of diners expected that sustainability would play an even greater role in their decision about where to eat out in five years’ time. So, for those already on the journey, this is no time to pause and for those yet to start, what are you waiting for. Ignore these findings at your peril.

So, five and a bit years on, I believe I am leaving the SRA in good shape and having played its part in bringing sustainability to the mainstream within our sector. Whereas originally we only had restaurants as members, now we work with universities, contract caterers, café chains, pubs and even train operators and airlines – but I hope that the vision we had at the start remains true and will see the SRA in good stead for many years to come.

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