The Fairtrade Foundation is embarking on a three-year push to encourage the out-of-home sector to offer more products with the Fairtrade marque and to promote them to their customers. The aim is to mirror the success of Fairtrade products in the grocery market, in the fast growing catering and food-service sector. The drive comes as figures show that the Fairtrade Foundation is set to meet its target of doubling Fairtrade sales every two years, with overall sales of products certified by the Fairtrade Foundation for the first six months of this year reaching £63 million, equivalent to sales for the whole of 2002.
The Fairtrade Foundation hopes to alert food -service and catering companies to the increased number and range of Fairtrade certified products, and to the developments that now make it very easy for them to stock and promote products with the marque. The organization is launching a new directory of over 100 companies that supply Fairtrade certified products to the food service industry, available at www.fairtrade.org.uk/suppliers_caterers.htm.
Eating places are also being encouraged to display the fact that they are serving Fairtrade through new promotional point-of-sale materials - posters, table talkers, coffee mats and window stickers - produced by the Fairtrade Foundation and available through distributors and wholesalers.
"Fairtrade is already growing rapidly in the out-of-home sector, but there’s a long way to go before consumers have the same choice of products with the Fairtrade marque when eating out as they have for their weekly shop," says Ian Bretman, deputy director of the Fairtrade Foundation. "Nearly half of what we spend on food and drink is consumed outside the home so we are asking workplaces, cafés, restaurants, and so on to stock Fairtrade certified products and to use the display materials to inform their customers that premises are using Fairtrade-certified products."
As part of the three-year drive, the Fairtrade Foundation will also target companies with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies to highlight Fairtrade as a very simple way to further the aims of such policies, pointing out that the price difference is minimal.
In the fresh produce sector, Fairtrade bananas, mangoes, pineapples, citrus and stone fruit are all available in the UK.
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