Support Farmers & Fishers: venn

“Our whole restaurant is built on a simple idea. We buy the way we cook: by relationship, by origin, with respect for those who grow,” says Co-Founder Snider Rodrigues. “We prioritise small-scale and emerging farmers using agroecological, organic and agroforestry practices. These producers often cannot compete with industrial supply chains on price, yet they grow the food with the strongest social, ecological and traceability value. If restaurants like ours don't back them with fair, reliable purchasing, that food simply stops being grown.” 

Conscious sourcing at venn 

Almost all purchasing at venn runs through direct relationships. At the time of writing, approximately 78% of their traceable ingredient value comes from named producers across Portugal; 100% of matched ingredients have a documented origin. “Every new supplier is screened through our Supplier Assessment Framework (a multi-lens scoring system covering social, environmental, cultural and traceability criteria), plus origin checks, direct conversation and, where practical, farm visits,” says Snider. “Our menus and website name the farms behind each dish.” 

venn’s Supplier Code of Conduct was formalised in March 2026. “It codifies practices we had already been living for a full year, so the writing-up was really an exercise in describing what we do and committing to it publicly,” explains Snider. This comprehensive code of conduct sets minimum standards on labour and human rights, environmental management, transparency and traceability, animal-free supply and integrity in how certifications and origins are represented. Designed to be a living policy, it will be reviewed at least annually. "Clear documentation matters because it turns good intentions into something suppliers, team members and guests can hold us to,” he says. “It also gives small producers certainty about what working with us involves.”  

Supporting farmers and fishers at venn 

Speaking of certainty, the team at venn is deliberate about acting as a reliable long-term partner for the small-scale businesses in their supply chain. “Small farms run on tight cash flow; late payment or vague terms quietly transfer all the risk onto the people least able to carry it,” says Snider. "When that's overlooked in hospitality, growers stop planting for restaurants, and everyone's menus get more industrial. Our terms are simple and written down: clearly defined purchase terms, a fair price, agreed delivery schedules, regular communication and multi-year commitments where possible.”  

On paper, venn commits to payment within 30 days of invoice. “In practice, we usually pay promptly on receipt, precisely because we know how cash-tight small producers are,” he says. “The principle is simple: a meal is only cheap if its cost has not been moved onto someone else, and our terms exist to make sure that someone is never the farm.”

For context, Snider explains, EU law already caps payment for fresh, perishable produce at 30 days under the Unfair Trading Practices Directive, yet Portugal’s own 2026 data (Informa D&B) shows only 20.2% of companies actually pay suppliers within agreed terms. “We’re now going further, developing a restaurant-supported CSA with one of our growers. venn is pre-committing to seasonal harvests before planting, so that risk and reward are genuinely shared, with the ambition of inviting other restaurants to join and piloting this model in Portugal.” 

This collaborative approach to sourcing has a direct impact on menu design. “Procurement leads; the menu follows,” says Co-Founder and Executive Chef Monika Bloch. “Working with what our growers actually have is the opposite of constraint. It hands us ingredients most kitchens never see, and pushes us into fermentation, whole-vegetable cooking, and heritage and culturally important Portuguese ingredients that make the menu distinctive. The limits are where the creativity comes from.” This translates into a tasting menu that diners won’t experience anywhere else; depending on the evening, they might be served heritage Barbela wheat, wild Alentejano truffles or acorn flour from ancient oaks. 

Managing high-risk ingredients 

Sourcing high-risk and commodity ingredients with transparency and fair terms of trade can be challenging, and the team at venn avoids some of these entirely. “We don't buy cocoa, for example, given the documented deforestation and labour risks in parts of that supply chain; we use an upcycled, organic, cacao-free alternative instead,” Snider shares. “Rather than buying commodity sugar, our sweetener is sugarcane syrup from a long-established Madeira producer, and our chilli comes from a named Alentejo farm. Our only marine ingredient is ASC-MSC-certified seaweed.”  

Around 20% of venn’s ingredient value is imported out of necessity (things like certain nuts, coconuts and speciality grains), and they treat these imported ingredients as higher-risk by default, prioritising traceability and certification where meaningful. “For imported nuts like macadamia, we source through smallholder programmes connected to organisations like One Acre Fund,” he explains. This nonprofit social enterprise pays Kenyan farmers directly and transparently at the point of harvest, cutting out exploitative middlemen and reporting significantly improved grower incomes  

Sourcing responsibly in the city 

Hospitality businesses based in urban environments have their own challenges when it comes to responsible sourcing. “We're a single-site restaurant in central Porto, in one of the city's densest, hottest districts: we can't grow our way to a menu on-site,” says Snider. “Our answer has been threefold. In the city, we have PATIO, our 46m² growing and community space project, as well as a pilot run of our mushroom growing plan in the basement and we're running a composting loop back into the soil of the patio. Beyond Porto, we have a mapped network of producers across mainland Portugal, built farm-by-farm over multiple seasons, and held together by fair terms rather than proximity.” The third part of the strategy is the CSA pilot, which aims to bring the stability of pre-commitment to growers who venn can't physically neighbour.  

Policies in practice 

No sustainability strategy can be successful without bringing the entire team on board. At venn, the importance of responsible procurement is kept front and centre, built into onboarding and ongoing training — including product knowledge — and into the team handbook. “We organise farm and producer visits so the team meets the people behind the ingredients, and our front-of-house team is specifically briefed to tell provenance stories at the table, including through EAT.BITZ, our biodiversity storytelling project that links each dish to the species and farms behind it,” says Snider. 

To engage the diner, farms are named on the menu; a public provenance archive is being built on the venn website; and venn's bilingual provenance report shares the full network: the map, the numbers, the honest gaps. “At the table, EAT.BITZ turns provenance into conversation rather than a lecture. The impact is that guests leave knowing that their dinner had named growers behind it, and producers see their names in front of the public they rarely reach.” 

Stringent sourcing, stronger business 

Monika is clear that this considered approach has strengthened operations. “Where we feel it most is in the dining room. Guests notice that the menu names farms, and it changes the conversation at the table: they ask about the growers, they remember the ingredients and they leave with a story rather than just a meal,” she shares. “Many now come specifically because of how we source and the niche we have set ourselves in with regards to our cooking style. This shows in reviews and in how often people bring someone new to share the experience. Our three-star Food Made Good Standard gave us outside confirmation of what guests were already telling us. Behind the scenes, multi-season relationships give us supply stability and quality that spot-buying never could, and the team's pride in the sourcing carries straight into the service guests receive.” 

Snider advises other restaurants to start with human relationships, not paperwork. “The policy should describe what you already do.” To support these relationships, “Pay on time, every time. It's the single most meaningful form of support." Snider also advises operators to treat certification as one evidence pathway, not the only one; visits, traceability and honest conversation work when you’re partnering with smallholder farms. Finally, he says, “Name your producers publicly. It costs nothing and changes everything.” 

Food Made Good at venn 

venn completed the Food Made Good Standard in mid-2026 with a high three-star result and notably high scores under the Sourcing pillar. “We wanted an external, credible benchmark for practices we believed in but had never had independently assessed,” explains Snider. “The process itself was surprisingly useful. Gathering evidence forced us to formalise things — our procurement policy among them — and showed us we had more documented proof than we realised.” 

“It's early days as we've only just completed, but the report has already shaped our plan: extending the sourcing policy to specific high-risk commodities, making certified ingredients visible on menus and building out environmental monitoring. The score gave the whole team a shared sense of what we're protecting and where we go next.”  

This next step is the CSA-style agreement the team is now setting up with Corotos Living Lab, an agroforestry farm in Balasar, Povoa de Varzim (40 minutes north or Porto). “This farm is now trialling our Ark of Taste purple carrot for winter harvest: venn commits to the harvest before it's planted, so the farm no longer carries the season's risk alone,” says Snider. “If the pilot works, we want to open it up for other restaurants to join, and grow it into a wider model for how Portuguese restaurants back their farmers.”  

Learn more about venn on their website.   

Our goal in sharing case studies from our Food Made Good network is to help you discover new actions you can take in your own business. If you’re looking for more inspiration on sustainable sourcing, don’t miss our 2026-27 global sustainability insights report, “Hospitality Rising: Global Challenges, Local Solutions”. Exploring the latest trends and influences shaping the sector, it’s packed with examples of smart sustainability initiatives from businesses of all shapes and sizes across the world. Download your free copy now!

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All images courtesy of venn. Lead image credit: Paula Yubero.