A green office supporting local communities

We are striving towards being as sustainable as possible in everything that we do in our restaurants both in Åhus and Stockholm.

We aim to minimise our costs and support our local community by buying local produce. Purchasing produce during the pandemic proved challenging and an increasing number of local farmers emerged growing a wide selection of produce including vegetables, grains, dairy, meat, fish and poultry.

Today, all of our suppliers in Stockholm are within a 2km radius – shorter distances mean fewer carbon emissions, and we are also working on receiving fewer deliveries overall. We even have an eco-agreement with our main supplier with a discounted price if we reduce our deliveries to once per week. To complement our move to source locally, we also have our own rooftop garden where we grow all kinds of herbs and produce.

A clean plate strategy

Reducing waste is a huge focus of ours. For example, kitchen leftovers and food left on our guests’ plates are collected and then used by the City of Stockholm to regenerate into biofuel to power the City’s buses. In addition, any other leftovers from the kitchen are sold as meals at a reduced price, meaning that practically zero per cent of our restaurant’s food is wasted.

I am a strong advocate for sourcing local and sustainable produce and products whenever possible
Conny Johansson, Restaurant Manager

We strive to educate our guests so they can help us keep waste to an absolute minimum. It can be challenging. In the past, we had several bins for paper and plastic, but we found the more bins you had the more confusing it could be and many just put all their rubbish in the nearest bin. We now have fewer bins and narrowed the choice (all food waste goes in one container) which has meant we
can reduce more waste. We also ask our guests to be mindful not to overestimate their orders. For example, we usually recommend ordering 20 when they have a ‘Fika’ for 30 since not everyone drinks coffee or eats cinnamon buns.

The green office project

In the past, we only separated cardboard from paper and glass in the Stockholm office. But we have come a long way since. Today, as part of our Green Office project, we recycle and separate the majority of our waste, from batteries, electronics, and cardboard to compostables and different types of glass and lamps.

We are installing charging stations in the staff parking lot to encourage the use of electric cars
Björn Lorenz, Facility Manager, Head Office

We have recycling containers all lined up with clear instructions for our employees to identify what to throw in each bin. We also give our people a helping hand. For example, when employees receive packages, we unbox them and place the contents directly on their desks or departments. That way, we can recycle their packaging for them and keep a tidier-looking office. It’s not just recycling that matters. We are replacing all our energy-saving lamps throughout the office (we’re halfway there), with LED lights, which use 50 per cent of the energy and we have reduced about 2,500 square meters of office space during the past two years, as many of our staff work remotely, either at home or on the road.