75% OF FOOD WASTED COULD HAVE BEEN EATEN, COSTING A STAGGERING £2.9 BILLION TO OUR INDUSTRY IT’S TIME TO RISE UP AGAINST FOOD WASTE.
Lexington Catering, one of London’s leading contract caterers, has signed up to support WRAP’s Guardians of Grub campaign. Guardians of Grub has been developed to inspire action at every level of the hospitality and foodservice profession; from kitchen porter to business owner and across preparation and service.
Julia Edmonds, Managing Director at Lexington, says, “As caterers we have a responsibility to help beat food waste so we are delighted to be involved in The Guardians of Grub campaign and look forward to working with the team. Alongside the various technology solutions and food packaging innovations we have created our own low waste food concept –TRASHED – which we have started introducing into many of our client sites.
“This focuses on creating delicious dishes, utilising sustainable breeds and cuts of underused meats and vegetables that generally end up being thrown away. We know that educating our team, clients and customers about the associated sustainable and health benefits is key. We are introducing the brand methodically to ensure we encourage lasting behavioural change and highlight how we can all get creative by ‘rescuing’ food in the workplace or at home.”
Lexington Catering will be sharing what it is doing as a business to help tackle food waste and working with the Guardians of Grub to share best practice. The team will also be supporting the Guardians of Grub team’s #StandupforFood month of action, which takes place this month.
In a bid to support the campaign, Tom Bradley, Lexington Catering’s TRASHED Ambassador, will be sharing some of his TRASHED related tips with the team.
In 2018, fuelled by Lexington’s desire to constantly find ways to minimise our environmental impact the team launched their latest food brand, TRASHED. Trashed was also the theme of the company’s annual LexChef competition, with the intention of making it a permanent part of our offerings across sites.
Proactively recognising the need to take action to reduce waste, Rob Kirby, Chef Director asked chefs to source their ingredients as responsibly and sustainably as possible to produce a vegetarian starter followed by main course and dessert.
Focus was on wasted products, sustainable breeds/cuts and bi-products, as well as the utilisation and re-purposing of things used on site that generally end up thrown away. TRASHED put the Lexington team to the test by encouraging them to think about their role as chefs in helping reduce food waste.
The award-winning brand started to be rolled out across Lexington sites in February 2019. Rob Kirby, Chef Director at Lexington says, “As chefs we have a responsibility to help beat food waste. We wanted to provide an opportunity for our team to get creative and look at ways to use food that may otherwise end up in the trash bin – I wanted them to think about the cuts, the ugly veggies and total nose to tail.
“We used the competition as a way to introduce the TRASHED concept to our team, customers and partners about the role we can all play in helping reduce food waste.”
