It is a matter of survival to have long-lasting economic success. Companies have to take profits continually from their main business because this is their business objective and secures their future. Even businesses in the catering industry have to be successful economically.
As a canteen of a company, or as a food service facility of a hospital, they don’t always have to make a profit, but in any case, they have to avoid losses, for instance, by keeping their budgets. Which connection exists now between sustainability and economic success? Sustainability and economic success are connected, as shown in the next three examples. Often, high quality units use resources sparingly and have low operating costs, but they require higher investments, in comparison to low quality and therefore cheaper ones.
But generally speaking, the high acquisition costs are recovered during the running time so that at the end, the entire costs are often less than those of low cost units. Companies, which are able to put these types of investments into practice, work more economically than those, which are dependent on simple equipment. It is a cycle: economically healthy businesses are able to invest long term; the others are not in a position to do this. The second example is paying the staff. Only economically healthy businesses are able to pay their employees properly and are able to dispense with minimal wages or the employment of quasi self-employed at dumping prices.
The third example is the food products, which are processed in a professional kitchen. High quality foods cost money, but then they also generate higher revenues, if they are prepared attractively and can be offered to guests with the corresponding purchasing power. It can be turned around as you like – sustainability can only be achieved on an economically solid basis. Or to make it even clearer, sustainability requires a good profit from which it can be financed.
From vision to implementation
But it is also important that the bosses of a business want to operate on a sustainable basis. It is simple in a restaurant. The patron says how things ought to be done. On the other hand, where employees are fed in a company, then it is different. Sustainability has to be an important part of business politics in all areas from purchasing via the production up to sales/service. Then it can also be put into practice in catering management as is shown in the following example .
juwi AG – Benchmark for Success and Sustainability
Two pioneers for renewable energy, Fred Jung and Matthias Willenbacher, founded juwi AG 1996 in Wörrstadt, Germany. The owners are still running the company, which is not listed on the stock exchange. It employs more than 1,800 employees worldwide and has generated a turnover in 2012 of EUR 1.1 bn. It is working in the following areas: project planning for wind, solar and bio energy projects, the operation of such units and development of highly specialized solutions in the area of “efficient warmth, electricity and energy”.
If the customer wishes, juwi manages the entire process chain from consultation and space acquisition up to operation and service of the units. The company management’s vision in a nutshell: 100% renewable energy for a world, • whose inhabitants use clean energy at low and long term stable prices, • whose regional authorities become independent by avoiding excessive expenditure for the import of energy, and • in which the people find meaningful employment.
A Sustainable Catering Concept
Several years ago, the company’s management decided again to take charge over the outsourced gastronomy for the employees. That’s why it founded per 1/1/2011 a subsidiary company. Its job was to plan, implement, and operate a sustainable canteen kitchen, according to the corporate philosophy. The management of the subsidiary company drafted the following guidelines into their concept:
• CO2 emission should be reduced, especially with the transportation of foodstuffs.
• The cooks should cook all of the dishes fresh, even the sauces, stocks, soups, broths, cakes, and desserts (only 7% of the food processed today are convenience products).
• Whenever possible and suitable, they should buy their food in the region in order to strengthen its economic power.
• The people responsible should cultivate personal and fair relationships with their suppliers and guarantee that the suppliers fulfill juwitality’s quality requirements as well as sharing the values of the company. The kitchen planer Peter Adam-Luketic, managing partner of vtechnik Planung GmbH, describes how the guidelines of the company were implemented at a congress in March 2013.
Five Modules of a Sustainable Concept
He set up his catering concept on fives modules and defines for each one the most important contents: Module 1 – Concept Choice of food, quality, sales of the catering services, increase in value for the operator. Module 2 – Technology for Large-Scale Catering Establishments Detailed structure of future working processes, relevant equipment/best possible utilization, ergonomic requirements, necessary space, height of the space, energy sources and their efficiency.
Then according to Adam-Luketic’s experience, the equipment in many large-scale kitchens is standing still 40% of the day. During the remaining 60%, they are used equally for active cooking process resp. cleaning. That’s why the planer poses the question time and again, why for instance so few operations use the possibility of cooking their food over night or washing dishes during the off-peak period of energy use. Module 3 – Profitability Offers for the guests, prices, running costs especially with respect to the personnel. Module 4 – Socio-Culture Communication, health, personnel commitment Module 5 – Ecology Building materials, environmental costs, CO2 emission, raw materials for the cooking process.
Practical Examples of a Sustainable Meal Practice
The following examples show exemplarily, how the planer implements his concept practically. Example No.1: Overnight Cooking With cooking overnight, the operations use a production-free time particularly in order to cook larger amounts of meat. These processes run at low temperatures and that’s why they take a long time. But that is not a problem because there are no other cooking processes, which can be blocked by overnight cooking.
This cooking method has positive effects economically but also with respect to sustainability: The roasting losses sink from about 25% to 13%. That’s why less raw material has to be used for a given portion volume in comparison to the classical cooking methods; thereby the costs for cooking food is lowered because the demand for meat products declined. If more cooks would act like their colleagues at juvitality less animals would be needed, also less fodder and veterinary drugs. In respect to cooking, there are also no problems because the processes in modern cooking devices run program-controlled. You start-up at the desired point of time, follow your programmed cooking cycle, and keep the specified temperature until after its completion.
Adam-Luketic has implemented such overnight cooking processes at juwitality and as a result has reached the following effects: Due to the fact that the devices are utilized better, fewer have to be purchased. They could be placed in a smaller space and lower operation costs. Example No. 2: Energy Sources An energy management system controls all large devices. Geothermal units, wind power stations, solar power units, and biogas units serve as energy sources; the latter processes, for example, the operation’s wet waste. Dishes are washed with recovered warmth; the energy, which is set free during the process, heats up the plate warmers, the waste heat from the heater is used for thermal and cooling processes.
Based on these energetic basic structures, the planer implements many other individual measures, partly in close collaboration with the manufacturers of devices. In this way, for instance, heat bridges are optimized at the meal serving stations, the cooling/heating cycle is coupled repeatedly, or the locations for the cold store is analyzed precisely, because the cooling waste at an optimal placement is 80% less in comparison to an unsuitable one. Additionally the planer made the producers of the cooling devices to use a very strong insulation of 100 mm.
Benchmarks with Energy Use and CO2 Emission
Could juwitality really set benchmarks in CO2 emission with its new kitchen? In order to answer this question, Peter Adam-Luketic has looked into the results of the so-called SUKI Study (SUKI – Sustainable Kitchen, canteen kitchens managed sustainably), which was conducted by employees of the Austrian Resource Management Agency. Six large-scale consumer operations participated in this Austrian-Czech joint venture, whose results were published in 2010.
From studies, which were not mentioned by the authors, it may be presumed that in Austria’s dining out industry with the production of 1.5 million meals daily, between 20 and 25% of the energy volume could be saved with the corresponding effects for pollutant emission. Catering professionals influence the production of greenhouse gas emissions, But this is done not only directly by their cooking processes, storage, or cooling but also indirectly by the foodstuffs that they use. Scientists have calculated the indirect energy use for those 22 foodstuffs, which are processed most frequently in Austrian canteen kitchens including beef, pork, poultry, full cream milk and plain yogurt, potatoes, pasta and rice, green salad, and some varieties of vegetables and fruits.
In order to be able to calculate the CO2 emissions, they examined the life cycles of the foodstuffs from the agricultural production in inland or abroad, (differentiated according to biological and conventional means of production), by wholesaler distributors (storage and transportation from the field to the canteen kitchen), as well as the processing. Austria’s most important importing countries are Italy (pasta, vegetables, fruit) and Germany (meat and poultry). Over 90% of all the total emissions with animal products can be allotted to agricultural production.
Thereby, the production of fodder and the gastric fermentation of cows and cattle are of particular significance. Seasonable vegetables that are produced locally i.e. organic products produce the least emissions. In comparison to an Austrian organic tomato, a tomato imported from Italy emits 65% more CO2 whereas the percentage of the transport emissions is almost 90%. On the other hand, the situation is entirely different with costlier industrial production processes, as the example of French Fries demonstrates. The largest percentage of the CO2 emissions here is allotted to the production by the producers.
The situation with mashed potatoes is not quite as pronounced, but comparable. In the context of their study, the scientists have calculated that per meal an average of 3.6 kWh of primary energy is used and an average of 2.08 kg CO2 is emitted. The concept, which has been implemented by juwitality, makes clearly lower values possible, which have level out at 1.93 kWh and 0.8kg CO2/meal. Projected onto half a year with 120 working days, the company has saved 242,000 kWh and 173 tons CO2. in comparison to the average value of the SUKI Study. With these results, the people responsible could set a real benchmark.
Conclusions
The discussion on emission values should not lead to taking French Fries or other components off the menu. Rather, it is to be asked how often they have to be offered. This is due to the demands of the guests. Cooks can also ask where they can substitute them without a problem. Another question is, whether a meat dish has to be on the menu every day or if the cooks can win over their guests for a meatless day in the week. It is possible that such a menu planning requires a lot more effort, perhaps as a result, more demands will be made on the creative powers of the cooks and eventually the cost of purchase is also higher because regional and seasonal products are bought and the relationships to the suppliers have to be tied very closely. In any case, the kitchen team will have to invest more effort in communication with their guests and their superiors in order to create their concept than before.