Understanding Circular Business
In episode 8 of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we understand how businesses can become more involved in the circular economy.
In episode 8 of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we understand how businesses can become more involved in the circular economy.
In episode 8 of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we understand how businesses can become more involved in the circular economy. Ouseburn Farm and Dobson & Parnell share how they incorporate circularity to reduce food miles through sourcing produce locally, minimise waste and highlight the strong role played by their staff in conveying their sustainability ambitions.
You can listen to the episode here 👇
Ouseburn Farm is one of approximately 40 city farms in the UK and has been operating in various guises since 1976. The farm is a visitor attraction in the centre of the Ouseburn Valley, with animals, a cafe, retail space and it also hosts events. Additionally, Ouseburn Farm provides opportunities for adults with additional needs across the whole range of farming activities, including working with livestock, small animals, horticulture, crafts and cookery to improve the well-being and lives of people who visit the farm.
Benefitting the local community is encapsulated neatly within Ouseburn Farm's mantra to be a place for growing; plants, animals and most of all people. The farm is free to enter and aims to be a beneficial resource in the city that provides a place for the community to visit, while also providing distinctive opportunities for people with additional needs to improve their health and well-being as well as their quality of life through visiting the farm.
To become more sustainable, a key area is looking at how organisations can shorten their supply chain and support local businesses to foster circularity. Ouseburn Farm has a partnership with the charity Smile for Life, which supports young people with additional needs and helps them gain skills, confidence and opportunities. Working in the cafe at the front-of-house, these young people are very visible and at the forefront of the cafe's operations.
As a working farm, the fruit, vegetables and meat produce gets used in the cafe, but is also sent to local restaurants, such as the Cook House by River Brew Co. who has partnership and sponsorship arrangements with Ouseburn Farm. The farm's produce is used locally and has virtually no food miles, being served less than one mile away from production. This farm-to-fork aspect is of extreme importance as people want to know where their food comes from and the effort and knowledge that is required to produce it.
When visitors come to the farm, they can see how the animals are raised and how the fruit and vegetables are grown. Visitors also have the opportunity to talk to the farm's staff and some of the 60 volunteers from the local community who can share their knowledge about agriculture and food production. Sustainability should be demonstrated through using local produce and also through educational activities that explain and show how production takes place.
As a farm with livestock, Ouseburn Farm puts all organic waste into its muck bay and reuses it as compost for growing fruit and vegetables. Ouseburn Farm is also part of the Plastic-Free Ouseburn scheme run by Surfers Against Sewage, which aims to eliminate single-use plastic across the Ouseburn Valley. While there is some plastic usage within the farming environment - such as bags of animal food - these can be reused for storing compost. Ouseburn Farm attempts to reuse everything because as a charity operating a free visitor attraction, funding is tight and there is an economic incentive to be as sustainable as possible.
There is a need to be realistic about how much produce can be grown in a small location. The farm buildings occupy less than half an acre, with the surrounding fields bringing the whole farm footprint to slightly less than five acres. While Ouseburn Farm has limited resources, it's important to do everything possible to incorporate the circular economy. With 36,000 visitors, the cafe needs more produce than can be grown by the farm itself. However, by working with other local suppliers and having strong connections with other organisations in the region, Ouseburn Farm can ensure they only use ingredients that come from a short distance.
From annual visitor surveys, Ouseburn Farm knows that the majority of its visitors live within a five-mile radius. One of the challenges is encouraging visitors to use different transport modes to visit the farm and reducing the number of people driving into Newcastle and the Ouseburn Valley. However, the bus route through the Ouseburn Valley was closed and the farm isn't near the Tyne & Wear metro. Such changes in visitor behaviour are not easy and Ouseburn Farm intends to work with partner organisations such as the Ouseburn Trust - a local organisation that runs the Victoria Tunnel tours and has a broad remit in the Ouseburn Valley - and the City Council to improve the public transport services in the area over the coming years.
There are lots of challenges in achieving zero waste, of which many have been exacerbated over the last couple of years due to the COVID pandemic and the requirements for wearing disposable masks and COVID tests. Hospitality businesses used single-use plastics because they felt it was safer and couldn't use glass when everyone was required to eat in open-air venues. This necessitated a degree of balance between zero waste aspirations of businesses and their customers' expectations for hygienic and single-use utensils.
Besides COVID, there are other challenges to achieving zero waste. For example, there are very strict rules about using food waste to feed animals following the foot and mouth outbreak 20 years ago.
Eliminating waste is about making incremental improvements. For example, using biodegradable, cornstarch-based plastic on materials handed to visitors during large events. Ouseburn Farm also uses food waste from local restaurants and turns it into compost, which is reused on the farm. Ouseburn Farm also tries to minimise its usage of plastic and other disposable items. Zero waste is a goal and requires businesses to go on a journey to achieve such an objective.
Newcastle and Gateshead have a very strong focus on developing an inclusive economy, where there are opportunities for everyone. Such a belief is exemplified by Ouseburn Farm's placement programme which shows their commitment to ensuring that learning difficulties aren't a barrier to jobs and opportunities. For example, Ouseburn Farm has recently completed its first apprenticeship with a young autistic individual who obtained a distinction in Level Two Customer Service and was meeting and greeting visitors when they arrived.
It's vital to make people with additional needs visible to show that they are integral to the operations on the farm. The community-led approach of Ouseburn Farm, where they think about the needs and wants of the local community in terms of both visiting and living in the Ouseburn Valley can be considered as an innovative way of thinking.
Having stewardship of a large area of green space in the Ouseburn Valley is precious to people who visit, live and work in the area. For custodianship of this green space, Ouseburn Farm works in partnership with the Ouseburn Trust. Funding was obtained in 2021 from the local enterprise partnership to upgrade green spaces and Ouseburn Farm is now involved in a substantial tree and hedge planting programme to improve biodiversity and the quality of the land as well as make the area nicer to visit on a day out with more relaxing bird songs.
Another partnership developed by Ouseburn Farm is with Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books. Seven Stories is located near the farm and were doing a programme about fairytales in the Easter holidays. Ouseburn Farm collaborated with them to bring the story of Three Billy Goats Gruff to life and brought their goats onto the bridges in the Ouseburn area, providing a great opportunity for children to hear and immerse themselves in the story.
There are lots of little ways that Ouseburn Farm innovates. This programme of innovation ensures meaningful work is undertaken and shows the organisation's pride in being part of North East England's visitor economy and is one of the cornerstones of why people believe that Newcastle and Gateshead are great places to live, work and visit.
Dobson & Parnell opened in 2016 and carefully ensured that the restaurant's design, menus and produce reflected their sustainability ambitions from the beginning. Over time, Dobson & Parnell have evolved their offering and adapted to the ever-changing hospitality environment in Newcastle, and the UK in general. Customers' expectations have increased and the restaurant constantly pushes itself to maintain the same level and intensity it launched with.
Dobson & Parnell are part of the Sustainable Restaurant Association and from the beginning were very conscious of where their produce comes from and the food miles involved. They also considered how to ethically source coffee beans certified by the Rainforest Alliance and use recycled paper.
However, since Dobson & Parnell opened, it has become more common for restaurants to push the sustainability agenda. Reassuring and reinforcing these values is quite hard when everybody is also doing it and sustainability stops becoming a unique selling point for the restaurant. Therefore, Dobson & Parnell needs to do other things to stand out. In this regard, it has invested in staff training to show that its staff are just as important to the restaurant as where the food comes from.
Dobson & Parnell's menu changes daily to reflect the produce it can source. The restaurant saw the opportunity to reduce waste and use as much of each ingredient as possible. This feeds into the circularity concept and Dobson & Parnell have always done their own pickling, brining and fermentation to use up leftover food. These processes are quite easy for restaurants and are becoming more normal.
Dobson & Parnell constantly reinforces the circularity principle on its menus and recycles old ideas to reinvent dishes that they've previously made. For example, fermenting tomato juice meant that this ingredient could be stretched across the autumn and winter seasons and included in different dishes. Chefs should not only consider the prime piece of ingredients, but consider how they can be completely used, such as stalks and outer leaves of vegetables. This often means that restauranters need to become very creative and force this mindset of avoiding waste into their culinary team to strive towards extracting as much flavour as possible from every single piece of produce.
Educating customers about sustainability has always been present on Dobson & Parnell's menus. They show their pride in adopting such policies in an engaging manner and highlight how they experiment to extract the maximum flavour from ingredients.
Dobson & Parnell also use feedback from customers to pinpoint popular dishes which can be adapted in the future or created again when the ingredients come back into season the following year. Dobson & Parnell can also update their menus and modify certain techniques or sauces to incorporate customer feedback. The restaurant utilises this feedback to enhance customers' experiences so that they know that they will receive consistent service, encouraging repeat visits from their guests.
Restaurant staff interact with customers about sustainable cuisine in a personable and informal manner and they can have good conversations with their guests. When describing dishes, Dobson & Parnell encourage staff to pick out slightly more obscure things, such as the use of fermented products, and be proud of their work towards achieving circularity in the catering sector. This doesn't seem to deter guests from ordering certain dishes.
Dobson & Parnell's tasting menu offers a large range of produce and cooking techniques which gives a lot of elements to talk about during the guest interaction. Customer service is about building rapport with guests, enhancing their experience, making them feel comfortable and providing a relaxed ambience.
Circularity helps to support the local economy by buying local produce. However, when considering the bigger picture, it is quite tricky to source certain ingredients from the local area. You can push the circular economy message to an extent, but some produce is not suited to growing in the UK's climate and must be sourced from further afield. There is a need to be able to draw the line somewhere in procurement policies.
Supporting the local economy is important, but there is a need to balance everything to obtain high-quality produce. Looking at the wider picture, the North Sea has a large fish stock, but there is always the danger that it gets overfished. Procuring Icelandic fish, for example, is not local, but is considered as a best practice and sustainable certified option. These factors demonstrate the challenging nature of ensuring the sustainable sourcing of ingredients through an organisation's supply chain.
In terms of innovation in the kitchen, using technology has been commonplace for a while. Being able to perfect and make dishes more precisely is always key to streamlining cooking. However, a lot of the time chefs can get lost in the innovation process, which distracts from what the meals produced should be like. Consequently, there is a need to pick and choose the elements that you stay true to, with a lot of the older techniques actually being more favourable for keeping maximum flavour, with produce being kept at its most simplistic level. Therefore, in the context of kitchens, innovation is probably less important than in other parts of restaurants.
Circularity can help to shorten supply chains and reduce food miles. The circular economy strongly benefits the local economy and improves connections within the local community. There is a need to draw the line somewhere in terms of procurement as not all products are available in the local area. Therefore, using sustainability-certified materials can help to ethically source produce that needs to come from further afield. Organisations need to be realistic about what can be achieved through implementing circularity and not rely on idealistic mindsets through achieving balance in their procurement policies.
Reusing items for other purposes helps to reduce costs and minimise waste. Partnerships can be useful in facilitating collaboration between organisations and exchanging items that could be beneficial for other organisations as opposed to simply disposing of them. However, there are quite strict rules about the reuse of food waste which can pose challenges to organisations. Nevertheless, by being creative, restaurants can find new ways to fully use ingredients and maximise flavours.
COVID also resulted in an increase in single-use plastics due to the belief that it's more hygienic and such mindsets need to be eradicated by businesses demonstrating thorough cleaning processes. On the other hand, customers increasingly have higher expectations for businesses to be sustainable, which encourages organisations to keep innovating and developing new initiatives. Customer feedback can also be vital for changing operational processes.
Training staff is just as important as procuring ingredients and other supplies since these employees can help share knowledge about production processes and show how the circular economy works in practice and the benefits it brings, helping to educate customers. Inclusion is also part of encouraging circularity to ensure that people with special needs also have opportunities to develop their skills and be more visible in workplaces.
The podcast is part of the Hospitality Innovation Tourism Supply (HITS) programme which provides targeted support, learning resources and grant funding to businesses in Northumberland, Newcastle and North Tyneside to help make their ideas a reality. The programme is funded by North of Tyne Combined Authority and delivered by NewcastleGateshead Initiative, Food and Drink North East and NBSL.
In episode 8 of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we understand how businesses can become more involved in the circular economy. Ouseburn Farm and Dobson & Parnell share how they incorporate circularity to reduce food miles through sourcing produce locally, minimise waste and highlight the strong role played by their staff in conveying their sustainability ambitions.
You can listen to the episode here 👇
Ouseburn Farm is one of approximately 40 city farms in the UK and has been operating in various guises since 1976. The farm is a visitor attraction in the centre of the Ouseburn Valley, with animals, a cafe, retail space and it also hosts events. Additionally, Ouseburn Farm provides opportunities for adults with additional needs across the whole range of farming activities, including working with livestock, small animals, horticulture, crafts and cookery to improve the well-being and lives of people who visit the farm.
Benefitting the local community is encapsulated neatly within Ouseburn Farm's mantra to be a place for growing; plants, animals and most of all people. The farm is free to enter and aims to be a beneficial resource in the city that provides a place for the community to visit, while also providing distinctive opportunities for people with additional needs to improve their health and well-being as well as their quality of life through visiting the farm.
To become more sustainable, a key area is looking at how organisations can shorten their supply chain and support local businesses to foster circularity. Ouseburn Farm has a partnership with the charity Smile for Life, which supports young people with additional needs and helps them gain skills, confidence and opportunities. Working in the cafe at the front-of-house, these young people are very visible and at the forefront of the cafe's operations.
As a working farm, the fruit, vegetables and meat produce gets used in the cafe, but is also sent to local restaurants, such as the Cook House by River Brew Co. who has partnership and sponsorship arrangements with Ouseburn Farm. The farm's produce is used locally and has virtually no food miles, being served less than one mile away from production. This farm-to-fork aspect is of extreme importance as people want to know where their food comes from and the effort and knowledge that is required to produce it.
When visitors come to the farm, they can see how the animals are raised and how the fruit and vegetables are grown. Visitors also have the opportunity to talk to the farm's staff and some of the 60 volunteers from the local community who can share their knowledge about agriculture and food production. Sustainability should be demonstrated through using local produce and also through educational activities that explain and show how production takes place.
As a farm with livestock, Ouseburn Farm puts all organic waste into its muck bay and reuses it as compost for growing fruit and vegetables. Ouseburn Farm is also part of the Plastic-Free Ouseburn scheme run by Surfers Against Sewage, which aims to eliminate single-use plastic across the Ouseburn Valley. While there is some plastic usage within the farming environment - such as bags of animal food - these can be reused for storing compost. Ouseburn Farm attempts to reuse everything because as a charity operating a free visitor attraction, funding is tight and there is an economic incentive to be as sustainable as possible.
There is a need to be realistic about how much produce can be grown in a small location. The farm buildings occupy less than half an acre, with the surrounding fields bringing the whole farm footprint to slightly less than five acres. While Ouseburn Farm has limited resources, it's important to do everything possible to incorporate the circular economy. With 36,000 visitors, the cafe needs more produce than can be grown by the farm itself. However, by working with other local suppliers and having strong connections with other organisations in the region, Ouseburn Farm can ensure they only use ingredients that come from a short distance.
From annual visitor surveys, Ouseburn Farm knows that the majority of its visitors live within a five-mile radius. One of the challenges is encouraging visitors to use different transport modes to visit the farm and reducing the number of people driving into Newcastle and the Ouseburn Valley. However, the bus route through the Ouseburn Valley was closed and the farm isn't near the Tyne & Wear metro. Such changes in visitor behaviour are not easy and Ouseburn Farm intends to work with partner organisations such as the Ouseburn Trust - a local organisation that runs the Victoria Tunnel tours and has a broad remit in the Ouseburn Valley - and the City Council to improve the public transport services in the area over the coming years.
There are lots of challenges in achieving zero waste, of which many have been exacerbated over the last couple of years due to the COVID pandemic and the requirements for wearing disposable masks and COVID tests. Hospitality businesses used single-use plastics because they felt it was safer and couldn't use glass when everyone was required to eat in open-air venues. This necessitated a degree of balance between zero waste aspirations of businesses and their customers' expectations for hygienic and single-use utensils.
Besides COVID, there are other challenges to achieving zero waste. For example, there are very strict rules about using food waste to feed animals following the foot and mouth outbreak 20 years ago.
Eliminating waste is about making incremental improvements. For example, using biodegradable, cornstarch-based plastic on materials handed to visitors during large events. Ouseburn Farm also uses food waste from local restaurants and turns it into compost, which is reused on the farm. Ouseburn Farm also tries to minimise its usage of plastic and other disposable items. Zero waste is a goal and requires businesses to go on a journey to achieve such an objective.
Newcastle and Gateshead have a very strong focus on developing an inclusive economy, where there are opportunities for everyone. Such a belief is exemplified by Ouseburn Farm's placement programme which shows their commitment to ensuring that learning difficulties aren't a barrier to jobs and opportunities. For example, Ouseburn Farm has recently completed its first apprenticeship with a young autistic individual who obtained a distinction in Level Two Customer Service and was meeting and greeting visitors when they arrived.
It's vital to make people with additional needs visible to show that they are integral to the operations on the farm. The community-led approach of Ouseburn Farm, where they think about the needs and wants of the local community in terms of both visiting and living in the Ouseburn Valley can be considered as an innovative way of thinking.
Having stewardship of a large area of green space in the Ouseburn Valley is precious to people who visit, live and work in the area. For custodianship of this green space, Ouseburn Farm works in partnership with the Ouseburn Trust. Funding was obtained in 2021 from the local enterprise partnership to upgrade green spaces and Ouseburn Farm is now involved in a substantial tree and hedge planting programme to improve biodiversity and the quality of the land as well as make the area nicer to visit on a day out with more relaxing bird songs.
Another partnership developed by Ouseburn Farm is with Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books. Seven Stories is located near the farm and were doing a programme about fairytales in the Easter holidays. Ouseburn Farm collaborated with them to bring the story of Three Billy Goats Gruff to life and brought their goats onto the bridges in the Ouseburn area, providing a great opportunity for children to hear and immerse themselves in the story.
There are lots of little ways that Ouseburn Farm innovates. This programme of innovation ensures meaningful work is undertaken and shows the organisation's pride in being part of North East England's visitor economy and is one of the cornerstones of why people believe that Newcastle and Gateshead are great places to live, work and visit.
Dobson & Parnell opened in 2016 and carefully ensured that the restaurant's design, menus and produce reflected their sustainability ambitions from the beginning. Over time, Dobson & Parnell have evolved their offering and adapted to the ever-changing hospitality environment in Newcastle, and the UK in general. Customers' expectations have increased and the restaurant constantly pushes itself to maintain the same level and intensity it launched with.
Dobson & Parnell are part of the Sustainable Restaurant Association and from the beginning were very conscious of where their produce comes from and the food miles involved. They also considered how to ethically source coffee beans certified by the Rainforest Alliance and use recycled paper.
However, since Dobson & Parnell opened, it has become more common for restaurants to push the sustainability agenda. Reassuring and reinforcing these values is quite hard when everybody is also doing it and sustainability stops becoming a unique selling point for the restaurant. Therefore, Dobson & Parnell needs to do other things to stand out. In this regard, it has invested in staff training to show that its staff are just as important to the restaurant as where the food comes from.
Dobson & Parnell's menu changes daily to reflect the produce it can source. The restaurant saw the opportunity to reduce waste and use as much of each ingredient as possible. This feeds into the circularity concept and Dobson & Parnell have always done their own pickling, brining and fermentation to use up leftover food. These processes are quite easy for restaurants and are becoming more normal.
Dobson & Parnell constantly reinforces the circularity principle on its menus and recycles old ideas to reinvent dishes that they've previously made. For example, fermenting tomato juice meant that this ingredient could be stretched across the autumn and winter seasons and included in different dishes. Chefs should not only consider the prime piece of ingredients, but consider how they can be completely used, such as stalks and outer leaves of vegetables. This often means that restauranters need to become very creative and force this mindset of avoiding waste into their culinary team to strive towards extracting as much flavour as possible from every single piece of produce.
Educating customers about sustainability has always been present on Dobson & Parnell's menus. They show their pride in adopting such policies in an engaging manner and highlight how they experiment to extract the maximum flavour from ingredients.
Dobson & Parnell also use feedback from customers to pinpoint popular dishes which can be adapted in the future or created again when the ingredients come back into season the following year. Dobson & Parnell can also update their menus and modify certain techniques or sauces to incorporate customer feedback. The restaurant utilises this feedback to enhance customers' experiences so that they know that they will receive consistent service, encouraging repeat visits from their guests.
Restaurant staff interact with customers about sustainable cuisine in a personable and informal manner and they can have good conversations with their guests. When describing dishes, Dobson & Parnell encourage staff to pick out slightly more obscure things, such as the use of fermented products, and be proud of their work towards achieving circularity in the catering sector. This doesn't seem to deter guests from ordering certain dishes.
Dobson & Parnell's tasting menu offers a large range of produce and cooking techniques which gives a lot of elements to talk about during the guest interaction. Customer service is about building rapport with guests, enhancing their experience, making them feel comfortable and providing a relaxed ambience.
Circularity helps to support the local economy by buying local produce. However, when considering the bigger picture, it is quite tricky to source certain ingredients from the local area. You can push the circular economy message to an extent, but some produce is not suited to growing in the UK's climate and must be sourced from further afield. There is a need to be able to draw the line somewhere in procurement policies.
Supporting the local economy is important, but there is a need to balance everything to obtain high-quality produce. Looking at the wider picture, the North Sea has a large fish stock, but there is always the danger that it gets overfished. Procuring Icelandic fish, for example, is not local, but is considered as a best practice and sustainable certified option. These factors demonstrate the challenging nature of ensuring the sustainable sourcing of ingredients through an organisation's supply chain.
In terms of innovation in the kitchen, using technology has been commonplace for a while. Being able to perfect and make dishes more precisely is always key to streamlining cooking. However, a lot of the time chefs can get lost in the innovation process, which distracts from what the meals produced should be like. Consequently, there is a need to pick and choose the elements that you stay true to, with a lot of the older techniques actually being more favourable for keeping maximum flavour, with produce being kept at its most simplistic level. Therefore, in the context of kitchens, innovation is probably less important than in other parts of restaurants.
Circularity can help to shorten supply chains and reduce food miles. The circular economy strongly benefits the local economy and improves connections within the local community. There is a need to draw the line somewhere in terms of procurement as not all products are available in the local area. Therefore, using sustainability-certified materials can help to ethically source produce that needs to come from further afield. Organisations need to be realistic about what can be achieved through implementing circularity and not rely on idealistic mindsets through achieving balance in their procurement policies.
Reusing items for other purposes helps to reduce costs and minimise waste. Partnerships can be useful in facilitating collaboration between organisations and exchanging items that could be beneficial for other organisations as opposed to simply disposing of them. However, there are quite strict rules about the reuse of food waste which can pose challenges to organisations. Nevertheless, by being creative, restaurants can find new ways to fully use ingredients and maximise flavours.
COVID also resulted in an increase in single-use plastics due to the belief that it's more hygienic and such mindsets need to be eradicated by businesses demonstrating thorough cleaning processes. On the other hand, customers increasingly have higher expectations for businesses to be sustainable, which encourages organisations to keep innovating and developing new initiatives. Customer feedback can also be vital for changing operational processes.
Training staff is just as important as procuring ingredients and other supplies since these employees can help share knowledge about production processes and show how the circular economy works in practice and the benefits it brings, helping to educate customers. Inclusion is also part of encouraging circularity to ensure that people with special needs also have opportunities to develop their skills and be more visible in workplaces.
The podcast is part of the Hospitality Innovation Tourism Supply (HITS) programme which provides targeted support, learning resources and grant funding to businesses in Northumberland, Newcastle and North Tyneside to help make their ideas a reality. The programme is funded by North of Tyne Combined Authority and delivered by NewcastleGateshead Initiative, Food and Drink North East and NBSL.
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