A Food Made Good Success Story: Comptoir Group

“Sustainability is part of our culture and history,” says Victoria Gunter, “so it’s a natural extension of our operations.” She notes that, with their deep connections to the food-producing regions in North Africa and Southern Europe, it’s important to everyone on the Comptoir team that these fragile ecosystems are protected.  

While it can be difficult for smaller suppliers and producers to provide detailed information regarding production methods and provenance, the pay-off is worth the challenge – Comptoir’s attention to detail when it comes to sourcing continues to provide a deep understanding of their ingredients, producers, suppliers and partners, which filters into their food offering and menus. 

The team is particularly proud of how their menu design takes sustainability into account. They’ve completely removed beef from their offering – a single-stroke action that has a big impact on everything from carbon and water footprints to pollution and land use – and over 50% of every menu is not just plant-based, but naturally so, using whole-food ingredients. 

Food Made Good at Comptoir Group 

Comptoir Libanais took the Food Made Good Standard for the first time in 2023, earning that all-important first star. “We knew that we already employed sustainable principles and policies – especially when it came to our people and our food,” says Victoria. “We needed to know how best to formalise and expand on these foundations.” It was important to the team that the Food Made Good Standard would measure their sustainability ‘status quo’ while also providing guidelines for how they could improve in the future. Victoria was particularly impressed that the Standard was developed on a foundation of rigorous research and aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

“The Standard provides a clear roadmap and brings together current achievements and plans for the future in a manageable, easy-to-follow format,” she says of the experience. “The simple star rating is useful for communication both within and external to the organisation.” She highlights the specificity of the Standard as a particular selling point: because it’s designed especially for hospitality businesses, it’s a very good fit for any restaurant. “The level of support provided by The SRA’s team is very useful, and we love that it provides a clear structure for improvement.” 

A helping hand: the supported Standard 

Speaking of support, Comptoir Group was one of the first businesses to complete the Standard with additional help from The SRA’s team of sustainability consultants. This process has since evolved to become our supported and facilitated packages, now available to any business signing up. Through these packages, we can assist in engaging internal stakeholders through interviews and surveys, providing references to relevant supporting materials, facilitating the collection of necessary evidence and offering a highly detailed analysis and report of your results, giving businesses a tailor-made roadmap for improvement.  

Victoria reports that the Comptoir team found this experience to be very positive. “We are a small team, so this additional support was essential to us completing the assessment.” 

Since completing the Standard, it’s been a busy period at Comptoir Group. “We have lots to communicate,” says Victoria, “so we need to focus more now on getting our message across to customers. Luckily, the star rating system of the Standard makes it easy to communicate our sustainability as well as providing a way to measure and track our progress. It also helps our teams to engage and aim for improvement.” 

In addition to dedicating some time to communications, they have other plans in the works: these include reducing their energy use and trialling filtered water as a replacement for bottled water to reduce packaging waste. We look forward to working more with Comptoir as they continue on their sustainability journey. 

 
Our competitively priced supported and facilitated packages are designed to streamline the process of taking the Food Made Good Standard as much as possible, with our expert consultants guiding you every step of the way. For more information about these packages, please get in touch at standard@thesra.org.