Introduction
Reflecting on a year
of dramatic change
Last year, the theme of our report was
'sowing the seeds of change'; little did we
know back then just how much the world
would be disrupted, and how much both our
business and those of our customers would
also have to adapt to survive.
When the pandemic reached the UK, our
business had to completely change focus
almost overnight, as many of our customers
were temporarily forced to shut their doors.
In partnership with our biggest competitor,
we mobilised to deliver care packs to the
UK's most vulnerable people, as part of the
government contract to deliver food to those
shielding at home. We carried out three
million deliveries as part of this initiative, and
focused efforts on helping communities and
customers adapt. More detailed information
on our response to the pandemic and other
kindness and community initiatives we
championed can be found within the
Engaging our Communities section.
[1] Please note, this report covers the Bidcorp financial year, i.e. 1st July 2019 - 30th June 2020,
so data from July 2020 onwards will be covered in our 2020/21 report.
Although Covid-19 meant that most of our
environmental projects had to be put on
temporary pause, the pandemic also brought
into sharp focus the fact that sustainable
practices in food sourcing and supply chains
are more important than ever. The world is
waking up to the fact that business models
that don't work for their society or
environment aren't fit for the 21st century.
We just cannot continually exploit the natural
world without facing some dire
consequences across the globe. The need to
ensure 'Food for the Future' must absolutely
shape our current and future decisionmaking and purchasing. In doing so, we will
be more resilient and create the conditions
for sustained success, but we can't be naïve
as to the difficulty of doing this against a
back-drop of so much uncertainty for both
our customers and ourselves. No-one in the
hospitality sector is in a position to make
ambitious long term investment decisions,
and to pretend otherwise would be
misleading. Indeed, our parent company,
Bidcorp, has set a challenging target of 25%
CO2 reduction by 2025; we're currently
assessing how we might achieve this and
what metrics we'd use.