One of the South East’s leading restaurant suppliers has been given the task of finding a greener way to transport fruit and vegetables to London.
Vernon Mascarenhas has been appointed the Local to London Champion by the South East of England’s Sustainable Food and Farming Strategy Board. He will use £20,000 of funding from the South East England Development Agency to investigate and introduce the use of collapsible plastic boxes for transporting produce from growers to restaurants across London.
Mascarenhas calculates that switching to plastic reusable boxes will allow his company, Secretts Farm, to run four vans rather than five, because they can be loaded more efficiently. The saving for a medium-sized restaurant from switching from cardboard to plastic boxes is £2,000 in reduced waste disposal costs. There should also be other savings through better use of staff and the need for less space to store boxes for collection.
Mascarenhas supplies fresh fruit and vegetables from Secretts Farm at Milford near Guildford and from around 25 growers across the South East. A restaurant owner by profession, he started the business with partner TV food expert Greg Wallace in 2001.
He said: “We now have hundreds of customers across London, from Michelin- starred restaurants to local pubs. Over the season, we supply more than 400 lines of fruit and veg."
Since starting the business, the interest in locally produced food has grown, with restaurants keen to highlight the provenance of the fruit and vegetables they use in their meals, with customer concern growing over the environmental impact of imported food.
Mascarenhas said: “The trend towards sourcing locally has meant there is much more direct supply from grower to restaurant, so finding ways of doing that more efficiently is increasingly important.”
Mascarenhas’s project will run until March of next year. He will share his findings with growers and restaurant owners and is looking for the views of those looking to improve food supplies to London, particularly in relation to the Olympics.
No comments yet