Mowgli: ‘Sustainability is about building resilience and doing the right thing’

Fresh, healthy, and sustainable Indian home cooking is not only the brand positioning of the Mowgli Street Food, it’s also at the heart of the concept, according to CFO Matthew Peck and head of quality & supply Andy Mountfield.

For a business on its way to achieving net zero, social responsibility has to be impregnated into every aspect of the business, from the induction process to every step of the supply chain. Peck and Mountfield are spearheading the journey, while working with the Zero Carbon Forum, and looking to attain that tricky balance between sustainability and profitability.

“It’s not just bandying about targets or numbers without the data to back it up,” Peck tells MCA. “We’re working with partners who have the same mindset as us when it comes to sustainability.”

This means not only being choosy about food and drink suppliers, but also scrutinising every aspect of the business, which includes working with partners that can support the business with waste reduction and even ensuring the building of the website had a low carbon footprint.

“We ensure we know who’s responsible for different streams and what happens to the waste when it leaves us,” Peck continues. “We don’t have one separate department that deals with sustainability – it’s at the core of what we do.”

For Mountfield, a key part of his job is to ensure sustainability runs through every step of food and drink procurement. While much of the Mowgli menu is vegetarian or vegan, the team is looking to engineer the menu further to achieve its sustainability goals.

“Vegan and vegetarian dishes are the core of our menu,” Peck adds. “We do serve a lot of chicken and lamb dishes, but we’re looking at things like replacing the amount of lamb we use with other ingredients.

“We’ve also proven that we can move to electric kitchens and still serve lamb chops.”

Mowgli’s two most recently opened locations are equipped with gas-free kitchens. The next move is to retrofit electric kitchens throughout its estate, allowing the business to eliminate Scope 1 and 2 emissions from sites and go on to tackle Scope 3.

As of 2019, all electricity purchased is from renewable sources, while teams have achieved a 5% reduction in electricity usage over the past 12 months.

The journey to net zero doesn’t stop at measuring the menu’s carbon footprint or working with suppliers. For Mowgli, it means working with builders to look at the fit-out of every new site from scratch.

“We’re looking to open five restaurants a year over the next few years,” Peck says. “We’re already quite advanced when it comes to kitchens, but now it’s more about the fabric of the building.

“This can be challenging for a lot of builders.”

The cost of utilities has only sharpened the focus on sustainability. Peck is quick to point out that Mowgli wasn’t perfect from the very beginning.

“When I joined five years ago, social sustainability – in terms of looking after our people – was always at the core,” he reveals. “But we’ve had to take steps towards environmental sustainability.

“Covid was a reset, where an existential threat forced us to look at the business and think about building resilience.”

He defines resilience as a business that can take anything that’s thrown at it, be it a pandemic, government legislation, or utility bills.

“When it comes to profit vs sustainability, it’s moved from being an either/or…we’ve thought long and hard about resilience as a business that can withstand shocks and whatever else is going to come.”

Aside from government legislation and consumer expectations, Mowgli also looks towards its staff, both to engage in its journey and lead the way to net zero.

It appoints sustainability sergeants at each site to put forth issues and ideas for discussion on an open forum. This means the ability to swiftly address any issues when escalated and ensure the process isn’t top-down.

Sustainability is part of every element of the induction process, rather than a single segment added as an afterthought.

“It’s not just a random slide at the end…it’s just who we are. The teams’ engagement on sustainability has never been an issue.”

Gas-free kitchens might reduce the bills, but they’re also an incentive to create a cleaner environment for teams to work in.

On the other hand, meeting both staff and consumer expectations is a challenge albeit a welcome one.

“We take it as a challenge to get ethically sourced ingredients but maintain that price point,” Peck says. “We’re nothing without being perceived as good value.

“For a brand with a reputation like ours, our customers assume and our teams expect us to do the right thing.”

 

The Sustainability Award is sponsored by Pernod Ricard