Sustainability doesn’t have to start with sweeping changes, it often begins with the small decisions that start creating meaningful impact. In this conversation with wine consultant Giles James, we explore how pubs, bars and restaurants can integrate sustainability into their operations, supply chains and guest experiences. From reducing glass waste through wine in keg and refill systems, to using AI to minimise food waste, Giles highlights practical steps businesses can take while maintaining profitability and authenticity.
Sarah: Well, I’m delighted to be here talking to Giles James, who works with ID Wines. Giles, would you like to just give yourself a little bit of an introductory biography?
Giles: Yeah. So I’ve been involved in wine for over 20 years. I started off working in that sort of very traditional distribution model, working with restaurants in London. But around 2011, I wanted to sort of get a bit of insight into the other side of the fence, working with winemakers. So I set up a company around 2011, 2014 to actually be able to work with various producers, helping them build a distribution across other timezones and countries that I was based in, so primarily UK, Europe and Scandinavia.
And then that sort of organically grew into working with restaurants as a consultant wine buyer and also training their teams. And that in turn, has led to me sort of doing a few own label projects and actually importing and doing the whole selling distribution on behalf of clients. So all very much wine related, but sort of quite diverse in their own fields of interest.
And that has naturally led me on to sort of looking into sustainability. So for me, at the moment, things like you know, what are more innovative ideas that the wine industry can be doing as a whole to bring added value to restaurants or bars or parties, whatever that might be. And so that whole area of sort of canned wine, wine in keg and looking at the finer points of detail about sourcing is all very, very close to my heart.
What are the most impactful and less-publicised operational changes a pub, bar or restaurant can implement to significantly reduce its environmental footprint?
Sarah: Wonderful. Well, we’re going to drill down into a bit of that detail. So I’ve got some questions to ask you. About sustainability in the wider industry. But any of that stuff you can pull out about the sort of the pubs and the bars that you work with. So the first question is really around, sort of impactful change. So can you tell us a little bit about what’s the most impactful, but perhaps less publicised operational changes that pubs, bars or restaurants that you’ve worked with could implement to reduce footprints.
Giles: I think it’s a really, really broad area that the question encompasses, because it really goes to the heart of what does it mean to be sustainable, and what does it mean to have all these processes in place that reduce your impact on the environment?
I think, you know, if you take an example of an operator that wants to transition into that, you know, it’s costly, it takes time. And there’s quite a few people you’ve got to convince to sort of buy into why you should be doing it when it potentially comes at a great cost to the business.
Some of the behind the scenes things I think any operator could do, probably first and foremost is get in touch with the Sustainable Restaurant Association. These guys started in 2010, they’re now global and they’re there to advise and help restaurants as a charity organisation as to how they can conduct themselves better. So it’s taking an existing model and it’s going in and drilling into the detail and sort of working from very clear pillars to say, right, for example, what can you do about waste? What can you do about recycling? What can you do about logistics?
I think one of the simplest things you can do is through your buying. You know, take your wine list, for example for, you know, introduce Key Keg. Key Keg cuts down on almost 27 glass bottles. That has a positive impact on the logistics because you can ship more wine. So all the way through your supply chain through to your customer’s experience, there’s a degree of saving every step of the way. Moving from bottled spirits to buying pouches and refilling bottles, you know, working with some good cocktail companies to do pre-made cocktails that come in, pouches that you can put into bottles.
Sarah: There’s a win at the other end, isn’t there, with, you know, being able to sort of say to, to, to staff or the front line of those venues, you’ll get to save some time as well. There’s no more kind of wasted opportunity.
Giles: There is absolutely a cost impact to some of the things that you can do. You know, if you take, for example, sourcing food, you know, there is an added cost to buying locally. But, you know, there is an element of good will that people will buy into and will understand, there’s some people won’t get it, but other people will. By engaging and sourcing cleverly, if you take for example, spirits, there is a cost saving. So one thing will balance out the other, if your cost of produce is costing more, your cost of booze might be costing less. I guess you’re looking for balance.
How can hospitality businesses effectively measure success in their sustainability journey?
Sarah: How do you think hospitality businesses can actually measure their success in terms of what they’re doing on their journey towards sustainability?
Giles: I’ve worked with a pub that set out from day one to be sustainably minded. And their goal is to reduce their reliance on carbon credits each year. So whatever they can do in the following year to reduce it, that’s become the modus operandi. And they signed up to an organisation that measures your carbon footprint and then tells you what your sort of net carbon credit needs to be. And they go out and buy that. But that costs quite a lot of money. And again, they’ve done it from day one. So everything’s been set up for that program. So I think if an outlet or a group or you know, whatever the size of the operation is, you can internally start measuring, you know, if we are transitioning from bottles to pouches. How much glass are we saving? Can we upcycle anything within our system that we can bring back and reuse? Yeah. So, you know, instead of throwing bottles away, maybe we keep them for water or maybe we turn them into carafes for wine. And you know I think AI has got quite a bit to play with in terms of food waste. If you can reduce your reliance on blue roll I mean restaurants go through umpteen rolls of this.
I think there’s an opportunity to incentivise your staff. If they can proactively get on board and go, yeah I want to take responsibility for this because I think young people engage in this dialog conversation a lot better than older generations. And looking at your logistics, you know, looking at your supply chain, do you go out and work with suppliers that use electric vehicles?
So even though it’s not something that’s directly created out of your site, there are background things going on as well. And it feels very holistic. It feels as if, you know, that’s the sort of approach that everyone connected to the business can engage with.
Giles: So I think it’s taking those measures. Because an external audit is great. But yeah, I think it could be quite depressing if you’re transitioning and you get these guys and we’ll let you score. But I think I think you know if you take some measures in and get yourself and set yourself some targets, I think, you know, it can be fun. And it’s something you can talk to your customer base about.
In an era of greenwashing, what specific strategies can a hospitality brand employ to build and maintain real credibility?
Sarah: In an era of greenwashing, which we all know happens perhaps far too often, what specific metrics do you think hospitality brands can employ to build and maintain sort of real credibility so that they’re not seen by people as simply sort of ticking a box
Giles: I think it fundamentally has to come down to your core values and ethos as a business, so that any time that you are projecting yourself to the outside world, any claim that you make can be followed and traced back to this core essential value. You don’t have to come out with this all embracing, all encompassing plan.
Giles: You can say, right, you know what? It’s going to be about our supply chain, or it’s going to be about our wine list, or it’s going to be about sourcing locally. And I think as long as you as long as all of your actions stem from that core principle, then if somebody questions it, you always bring it back and you go, well, actually, this is how it works.
One of the big supermarkets said that their chickens come from farms, but they just dropped the battery part. and that is just, you know, that’s just hoodwinking people. I’ve worked with a wine supplier in the past who you know, they are actively trying to reduce their carbon footprint. And they do a lot of good work. But one year they came out saying they put out this press release to say, you know, we’re carbon negative. So it’s interesting as it was a really bold claim. What it turned out was that they’d over bought that carbon credit. So they’re actually only purely by making a mistake thinking that they were carbon negative. I think for anybody it has to be a traceable route back to what that core ethos and values of the business are.
Sarah: None of us are perfect. Absolutely. And I think people prefer that honesty.
Giles: I try to write a wholly sustainable wine list, but, you know, given the cost of certain things and inputs and, you know, climate change having an effect on yields, you know, the cost of wine and the cost of getting things moved around the world. It’s costing more. And as much as you use Key Keg to try and reduce that, you know, bottles of wine become quite expensive when you want to be more sustainable. So at a certain price point in the wine list, you know, sometimes you have to go, we’re doing the best that we can. If 95% of the list is checking the boxes, and a little bit isn’t, we’ll be straight up about that. The intention is to do the best that you can. Yeah. Based on your model, based on where you are, based on what you want to achieve and sticking to that and being honest about it.
How does integrating sustainability into the core brand identity create a competitive advantage?
Sarah: And what do you think are sort of the key kind of competitive advantages of integrating sustainability into a hospitality business and the brand identity.
Giles: I think there’s a lot of goodwill. Yeah. There’s an awful lot of goodwill you get for being sustainable. You know, as I said before, you know, some people won’t get it. And I think if you’re the kind of outlet that’s much more of a faster in and out kind of business, people might not get it so much, and they might just perceive it as being expensive because they’re not regular enough. They don’t understand where you’re coming from in your story and engage in it.
I think when it comes down to goodwill, it’s goodwill with your staff. You know, with some places I’ve worked with when you employ a sustainable outlet and we’ve got sustainable practices, your quality with staff is going to be so much better and they’re going to be so much more engaged because they want to support that. And if you give them the right training and, you know, teach them and get them to understand how to communicate why you do what you do. And they take that onto the floor, that’s your message getting through to your guests. The guests buy into that if they’re going to have to pay a couple of pounds more for something, I think you’re going to find that, you know, they’re going to be a lot more comfortable with them.
There was a group, a gastropub group I worked with many years ago and they bought quite a lot of foraged mushrooms. Okay. And, they had a guest come in one night and they made this sort of ragu to go with this pasta and they poisoned a woman who was pregnant and a lawyer. So, I mean, on paper, that’s just an absolute nightmare.. And so, you know, they obviously did all the due diligence. They traced it back to this mushroom and they got back and they said, look, this is the situation.
You know, these are wild forage mushrooms. Something slipped through the net. We are so sorry. And she’s like, look, I’ve been coming to your pub for years. I love everything you do, this is the only time something has ever happened. I know what you’re trying to achieve. I just wanted you to know, just in case you had other reports coming in. You know, that this was documented. And she never stopped coming back.
I think that that’s a very, very extreme example of goodwill, but I think it just underlines things about principles and ethos as well.
Why is it beneficial to be more sustainably minded when trying to elevate guest experience ?
Sarah: So we’ve talked quite a lot about sourcing locally and sustainably. But can you talk a little bit more about, sort of integrating sustainability into sort of the guest experience? And also the wider kind of community relations. We all know the pubs in particular, are the heart of communities and have a part to play in, in giving back. But how do you think sort of working sustainably also kind of feeds into that, not just the kind of localised guest experience of the wider community?
Giles: Supporting external projects, I think is a really good way of expanding beyond what people experience when they come to you. So,I know some people that put a donation of their profits into organisations that plant trees in developing countries. Or other sustainable initiatives, whether it’s relating to water, or, you know, whatever it might be.
The guy that runs The Pig’sHead down in Clapham has one of these very clever composting machines that work at quite high heat. And they have an egg frame shelving unit outside the pub, and they put bags of compost outside so anybody walking past and just pick up a bag of compost to take home. It’s a good way of recycling.
Some people have, you know, charities that they like to support, you know, whether you pay 2 pounds for your water and you get unlimited water and then that 2 pounds goes to Great Ormond Street Hospital, you know, even though that’s not a sustainable thing, it is sustainable in terms of human life. And that’s quite a strong sort of way of supporting the community.
Sarah: And you mentioned a little bit, earlier on about sort of AI and sort of how that might be utilised. And we know that in hospitality businesses there are kind of AI driven waste reduction mechanisms that you can use. But what do you think are the best kind of emerging technologies?
Giles: I think the best emerging technologies are those that don’t put human jobs at risk. So you’re using AI or, you know, energy efficiency, to enhance the operation of your business, to make you cleverer in terms of menu development for guest experience. But don’t take away somebody’s ability to work in that position. So, for example, if you are if you’re a drive in fast food restaurant and you have AI taking your orders and you’ve just taken somebody out of that position, yeah, but if you have cameras over your waste bin that measure the food coming back and that analyzes those dishes and they’re saying, you know, on your pad Thai noodle, you’re wasting 40% on average, people change their portion control, which means you’ve just reduced your weight.
You’ve increased your GP, which means somebody is benefiting from that at the table because they’re not feeding them too much food. And also your bottom line is improving because you’re wasting less and buying less. And there’s a really positive knock on effect. So I think AI, you know, in reservation systems, for managing bookings and shuffling tables around and looking at the key times people want to come in and saying, what is your optimum best times for bookings.
How can hospitality businesses design a guest experience that can help educate its customers?
Sarah: How do you think hospitality businesses might design a guest experience that can kind of actively educate its customers. But the key is, I think, not being too preachy because nobody wants to go out for a meal or whatever, and then just sort of be like not lectured too so how can they do that in a kind of clever and engaging way.
Giles: I think, you got greenwashing on one hand which is kind of feeding not false information, but it’s not exactly wholly truthful. Yeah. And then there’s the flip side, which is let me tell you about your plate of food that you’re about to eat, it’s going to be cold by the time you’re finished. So I think again, it’s about this, it’s about balance. And doing it in subtle, effective ways. So I run a number of events, with one of my guys I work with and we do a series of dinners called Farm to Fork.
So we will get the produce for it. So, I’m doing one tomorrow with a venison producer. So they get to come in and they get to talk about what they do. You know, it’s all evidence based practices. And they will sit down with a group of 30 people who will enjoy a four course dinner. I’ll pair the wines so they’ll get the story about the sustainability of the wine.
But the focus is on the producer. So they share their ethos, their principles, why they do what they do, how they got to where they did their journey. And people get to sit down and have a really fun evening. It’s not subjecting people to sort of having to listen to things because they’re sitting down. Yeah, they’re eating the food that’s come from a regenerative farm. I also do grape to glass so we’ll have the winemaker come in and we’ll fit a menu around their wines and they get to talk about sustainability in their wine. We’ll take people to farms, we’ll take people to wineries.
You know, give them a day out and let them see, you know, what’s going on.
And actually something you mentioned before about the wider community, there’s some people I know who built their own kitchen garden that allows them at certain points over the year to maybe get around 40% of their vegetables out of their own kitchen garden.
Sarah: I think it’s really good to tell that story in a really positive way rather than sort of making people feel guilty. Yeah or talking to them about kind of like some of the more distressing aspects because at the end of the day, people are going for a pleasant night out.
Giles: When The Pig’s Head very first out the menu was probably 70% weighted towards vegan and vegetarianism. Okay. And their clientele base complained. And so the feedback that came back was okay, we actually want to eat meat because you’re known for great produce, great meat. So that led them to go out and do work with regenerative farmers and sourcing locally.
And we want to showcase that through these farms for dinner.
Sarah: And it’s really customer led and that’s, that’s really, really important. I could talk to you for hours, but we only have a limited time today, so I just want to thank you for your time and say cheers.
