20th February 2020
It’s about more than what’s on the plate
Our values are at the heart of everything we do at apetito. As the leading supplier of food to care sector, we feel it is our duty to cater for some of the most vulnerable people in society, while operating in an ethical and sustainable way. It’s why we’re delighted to have won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development, our second Queen’s Award in three years, third in total.
It’s about more than what’s on the plate.
We strive to make a real difference to our customers and community. We are committed to long-term support of the care sector and ensuring that the lives of residents and carers are continuously improved. Therefore, as a business we go beyond what’s on the plate. We’re dedicated to doing business in an ethical and sustainable way, enhancing health and well-being, making great food to be proud of and bringing a passion for service. It is what drives us as a business. We therefore focus our efforts on four areas:
- Our Business
- Our Community
- Our Customers
- Our Suppliers
We’re extremely passionate about sustainability. It informs not just the way we work, but how we treat people, the impact on the environment and our contribution to the economy. We’ve worked to embed this belief into the whole business from the strategy down to the day-to-day.
As such we demonstrated our commitment to our team, becoming an accredited Real Living Wage employer, joining an elite group of FTSE 100 companies and public sector organisations.
We’re a founding member of the UK Plastics Pact, to transform the plastic packaging system in the UK. Keeping plastic in the economy and out of the ocean.
As well as investing more than £1.2 million in becoming a sustainable Business.
As a leader in the Health and Social Care sector, we’re at the heart of many communities across the UK. Therefore, we aim to create social value for our employees and the communities that we work in. As part of this commitment, we launched the apetito Staff Foundation, encouraging employees to nominate projects to enhance the lives of others.
Some of the projects and activities they’ve been involved in include taking part in an organised beach clean, where we also raised awareness of responsible sourcing of fish and responsible attitudes to waste and recycling, completing the Yorkshire three-peaks challenge, volunteering at local food banks and organising food donations to 100+ homeless people, hosting monthly Sunday lunch clubs across the year for senior members of our community and help pupils studying Business and Finance at a local school.
As well as volunteering their time, employees have raised a considerable amount of money. In fact, since the Foundation opened in 2005, over £186,000 has been donated to worthy causes such as these.
As well as this, we’ve set up a charity partnership with Alzheimer’s Support and Alzheimer’s Society. These charities are close to many of our employees’ hearts, as well as the customers we serve.
In the space of just four years, with the help of our employees, we’ve raised an astonishing £128,000.
We’ve always cater for the most vulnerable in society, no matter what their requirements. We therefore developed a Specialist Nutrition ranges, to make tasty and nutritious meals for those with dysphagia, or swallowing difficulties, and those who are malnourished.
In 2016, we were fortunate enough to be award our second Queen’s Award for Enterprise for our dysphagia range of meals and in 2017 we launched our Mini Meals Extra range, to continue the fight against malnutrition.
As well as this, we’re one of the Founders and current Board Members of the Malnutrition Task Force, an independent group of experts across health, social care and local government, united to address avoidable and preventable malnutrition in older people.
In 2015 we became the only food company in the UK’s health and social care sector to become a Member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) – an internationally recognised code of labour practice committed to promoting and respecting workers’ rights globally.
Therefore, all our suppliers meet the requirements of the ETI Base Code, and we offer support and guidance to help them meet the required standards. We’re proud of the fact we work closely with our suppliers to improve their sustainability and have, on average, built and maintained relationships of 15+ years.
By creating these strong relationships, we can further help and influence our suppliers’ sustainability efforts by taking excess product they’ve produced rather than allowing it to go to waste. For example, if a supplier has had a bumper harvest, we’d work with them to take more of the produce and then freeze/store it rather than letting it go to waste.
Making a real difference
It is our corporate values and commitments that we believe set us apart from other businesses in the UK. We’re passionate about what we do and instil an ethical and sustainable culture throughout our business, from the top down.
Our commitments to our employees, suppliers, customers and community is something we take incredibly seriously, and is this commitment which allows us to make a real difference to those we work with.
carehomes@apetito.co.uk
01225 753636
www.apetito.co.uk/care-home-meal-services/
