Good Food on the Public Plate provides a wide range of assistance to a diverse cross-section of London’s public sector organisations including local authorities, hospitals, universities and care homes, to enable them to use more sustainable food in their catering.
The project is fully funded by the Greater London Authority (GLA) and our services are therefore delivered free of charge.
We provide both individual support and, where appropriate, support to clusters of organisations, either geographical or sectoral, to work together on collaborative procurement. We do so by:
- Auditing food purchasing
- Brokering supply chain links
- Advising on contract specifications
- Advising on purchasing
- Offering guidance on sustainable food procurement policies
- Providing networking opportunities
- Liaising with suppliers
- Identifying new suppliers of sustainable food
At this time GFPP is:
- Completing the development of the ‘London Cluster’; to allow any London public sector institution with in-house catering to opt in to large, cost-effective contracts for sustainable food. We now have 5 core members and are in the process of letting two contracts - for milk and meat - that we hope will result in farm assured, higher welfare produce being available to all the participants (beyond the core members). We are also just starting to develop a tender for fruit and veg.
- Seeking to work with more institutions that sub-contract their catering to help them buy more sustainable food from their private caterers. We are currently helping a number of organisations that contract their catering including Richmond, Kingston, Redbridge, Camden and Islington councils, UCL hospital and its partners (11 hospitals are in the group), South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, SOAS, the University of London and TfL.
- Finishing the development of the ‘Chelsea Cluster’ (the Royal Brompton and Royal Marsden hospitals, Imperial College, Lambeth Hospital, Thamesbrook Care Home). We have helped the cluster tender for fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables - the winner of the contract was a farm in Kent.
- Promoting sustainable fish, to highlight and make measurable progress on an issue of immediate sustainability concern, and the action public sector caterers can take to demonstrate responsible purchasing behaviour. We have in excess of 12 organisations who have confirmed they will take unsustainable fish off their menus and many more lined up to do likewise.
- Celebrating and entrenching good practice through events such as the Good Food on the Public Plate Awards (see the home page for more details about thte 2010 awards) and promotional days in institutions. Working closely with host institutions, our Feel Good Food days introduce menus featuring 'less but better' meat and dairy produce that provide benefits to the environment, animal welfare and human health - and can potentially save the organisation money.
The project was independently evaluated at the end of Dec 2009, at the end of the previous stage of the project. The evaluators found that 'contracts have been signed for annual purchase of sustainable produce to a total value of £1.5m'. Furthermore 'Contracts already out to tender are taken into account, the overall impact of the strand is significantly greater, indicating that the strand has resulted in an increase spending on sustainable food around £6 million'.
The evaluation states that '£1 of GLA funding for the Good Food on the Public Plate strand influenced between £8.57 and £38.70 of spend by beneficiaries; as the higher value largely consists of contracts that have in fact already been put out to tender we would expect the actual result to be close to the maximum estimate'.
The independent evaluation stated that, in addition to the above, 'If anticipated future spending is taken into account the total (money spent on sustainable food) rises to £6.6 million'.
Since the evaluation was written the project has started to work with even more institutions, including Transport for London (TfL) who have recently awarded two catering contracts worth circa £15.5m - much of which will be spent on sustainable food after the project provided advice on how this could be done. Thus, with at least 6 months of the project to go, the £6.6million figure is probably conservative.
The evaluation also states that 'Sustain built on its credentials in delivering the Good Food on the Public Plate strand to persuade the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) to introduce sustainable sourcing standards into its procurement regulations. As a result LOCOG-procured food during the Games will now include fair trade produce, free range eggs, and Freedom Food chicken and pork, and MSC fish'.
Having seen what the project has proven able to achieve, Rosie Boycott (Chair of the London Food Board), having personally contributed to development of the London 2012 Food Vision - wants the GLA Group to adopt and exceed the London 2012 food standards in their food buying.
Good Food Training for London
In a previous phase, the project worked with the Greenwich Cooperative Development Agency (GCDA) to create bespoke training for caterers and buyers in the public sector. GCDA now continues to run this programme, called Good Food Training for London.
- See the GCDA website for further information about current public sector food training opportunities
- See the Sustain archive webpages for information about the development and pilot phase of Good Food Training for London
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