A Food Made Good Success Story: Marugame UK

“Sustainability was super important from day one of setting up our brand,” says Hilary. “It’s simply the right thing to do.” She explains that, from the get-go, the goal was to build a responsible business that made a positive contribution to our shared future. “One of our five core values is ‘be honest and real’. We wanted to make the right decisions for our customers, our team members and our communities, and to be able to communicate transparently what we are doing and how we are doing it.” 

This inclusive view means that Marugame’s sustainability work is carried out with real people in mind. “We know our teams want to make sustainable decisions and we want to reassure them that working with Marugame helps them to do the right thing on a personal level, too,” says Hilary. “The same goes for our customers: we know sustainability is important to them and we want to make it easy for them to make better choices with us.” 

Once Marugame was lined up to launch in the UK in 2021, the team knew the Food Made Good Standard would form part of the process. “We knew that we wanted to work with The SRA to help us make the right decisions,” Hilary explains. One of our first businesses to complete the Standard using one of our supported packages, the Marugame team was pleasantly surprised by the level of help they received in completing the audit. “It was a lot of work, but The SRA team really helped us to keep on track,’ says Hilary.  

The Standard’s online platform allows for multiple logins from within a single business, which means that numerous staff members can contribute to completing the submission – something which the Marugame team found helpful. “The platform worked well and allowed us to collaborate as a team internally.” For any business considering signing up, Hilary says that the process itself is incredibly useful in the guidance and direction it provides. “Even if you don’t think you are doing enough, do the Standard anyway. That way, you’re at least aware of where the opportunities to improve are – and The SRA is always there to help.” 

Where has this direction led the Marugame UK team? For one thing, careful monitoring of energy use has reduced usage by over 25% in their flagship restaurant. “We are now rolling these learnings out across all our locations,” says Hilary. They’ve also launched Too Good To Go – a food waste redirection app – into all of their UK restaurants, cleverly saving over 350 meals from waste a week. 

One initiative of which they’re particularly proud is their Noodle Amnesty campaign, which invited customers to swap instant noodles for fresh. “As a result, we were able to donate over 2,000 meals to local food banks near our restaurants,” says Hilary.  

Continuing from here, Marugame is working their way through the recommendations provided in their tailored Food Made Good Standard report. “We’re working our way through all of the opportunities highlighted by The SRA and ranking them against our scores in each of the focus areas – this is helping us to identify which wins will be bigger for our communities and for the environment.” 

Learn more about Marugame Udon UK at their website here, and you can read more about the process of taking the Food Made Good Standard here. Need more info? Drop us a line at standard@thesra.org and we’ll answer all your burning questions!