What Does a Restaurant's 'Community' Really Look Like?

What defines a restaurant’s community?

Your community isn’t only made up of the village, town or city around your restaurant, but is instead an interwoven web including everyone who interacts with your business: your locality, customers, stakeholders, staff and supply chain. 

Looking at each of these groups in turn can help you identify better ways to strengthen your connections, create opportunities for collaboration and support and find new ways to further and expand your sustainability work. As Andrea Zick says when discussing how OXO Tower Restaurant, Bar & Brasserie considers their community network, “Everyone who makes up this community can be positively or negatively impacted by our business. By engaging actively with the community – be it external or internal – we know the needs of these different groups. This puts us in a better place to serve a purpose and to future-proof our business.”

Your locality

Your local area is probably the first thing that springs to mind when you think about your restaurant’s community. Restaurants and other foodservice businesses play an important function as valuable ‘third spaces’ within communities, facilitating social interaction and shaping local cultural identity. With this in mind, operators have both an opportunity and a responsibility to have a positive impact on their local areas. 

Sustainability Manager at Young’s pubs Aimee McDonald says, “There are many benefits to prioritising community involvement: improving mental health (we all feel better when we are helping others); building new relationships and business opportunities; and even driving sales, as residents are more likely to visit and continue to visit if they know you care as deeply about the community as they do. It also helps to increase employee engagement and retention, as people want to work for companies who genuinely care about making a positive impact on their communities and environment.”

It’s worth bearing in mind that, for bigger businesses and chains, community can span across multiple locations, countries or even continents. Find ways to get involved at a local level everywhere your business has a location, and avoid a broad-strokes approach: take the time to figure out what matters to the people in each place and how your brand can have a positive impact. Being conscious and respectful of differing cultures is critical.

Supporting your local community can involve things like:

• making charitable donations of money and/or surplus food,
• hosting festive dinners for homeless people in your community,
• giving your staff 1-2 (paid) volunteer days each year, or closing for the day to volunteer as a team,
• sponsoring local events and campaigns,
• offering your space for community groups to use (during quiet periods, this might even bring in extra revenue),
• supporting local talent, showcasing pieces of locally-made art and/or hiring local musicians to play, or
• collaborating with other nearby businesses to amplify your impact – why not team up to co-host community events together?

Your customers

Your customers are another part of your community, whether they live and work in your local neighbourhoods or not. 

• One way to do right by your customers is to offer discounted meals to particular groups, like students, over-65s, teachers, nurses or veterans.
• You can support your customers’ health and wellbeing by offering appealing, nourishing, delicious and sustainable meal options that make it easy for them to make better food choices. 
• While you don’t have to change your menu on a whim, it’s also important to let your offering be informed by what the modern consumer wants when dining out – increasingly, this includes creative plant-based options designed around whole foods, a truly great non-alcoholic drinks selection and attention paid to provenance, sustainable sourcing and minimal waste. 
• Offering great customer service is the cherry on the sundae.

Your staff

Development Director at Searcys Kathryn Richmond highlights how community involvement can attract new staff and boost employee satisfaction, which – as a happy side-effect – also makes a big difference in long-term retention. “There are a huge number of benefits for restaurants who prioritise community involvement, as it not only builds a strong sense of purpose and fosters teamwork and collaboration within internal teams, but it also offers the chance to meet new people and discover fresh new talent, forging the next generation of hospitality.”

‘Treat Staff Fairly’ is a separate focus area within the Food Made Good Framework, but there is an overlap; while supporting your local community brings benefits when it comes to the recruitment process, it’s important to remember that your employees are part of your community, too. Things like prioritising equity, diversion and inclusion, paying above legal minimum requirements, defining maximum working hours and putting policies in place to safeguard employee physical and mental health all have a real impact on their everyday experience. Offering development opportunities and career progression will continue to support your employees throughout their working lives.

Your stakeholders

Your restaurant’s stakeholders are yet another piece of the puzzle. Of course, your role here is to offer a return on investment, but the responsible way to do so – both financially and morally speaking – is by ensuring that your operations have an overall positive impact on people and planet. 

Educate your stakeholders on why sustainability makes good financial sense, making a strong business case for setting sustainability targets that are measurable, ambitious and achievable, then reporting on these with transparency. Doing so will strengthen your brand and protect your business against increasingly stringent environmental legislation down the line – all of which will benefit your investors.

Your supply chain

Your supply chains are a significant part of your business community. Of course, simply by ordering, you’re offering support to your suppliers, but you can also take a ‘scope 3 mindset’ when it comes to spreading the sustainability message upstream and working with your suppliers to encourage better practices, massively expanding your impact. Initiate conversations about reducing packaging, carbon emissions, pollution and/or water use, and about how you can source seafood and high-risk commodities like coffee or chocolate in the most sustainable way possible.

Collaborate and innovate with your suppliers to find solutions that enhance your shared sustainability impact. At Brunning & Price, for example, their supplier engagement programme works with suppliers to help them reduce their emissions. “We already measure our carbon emissions and have a programme to reduce these across our operations and through the supply chain,” explains Nicola Stuart, Head of Marketing and Communications. “Now, we want to support suppliers in reducing their carbon and in taking waste out of their processes.” Their emissions reduction programme includes educating suppliers through a series of workshops, providing them with practical information on how to calculate and reduce their own scope 3 emissions.

Find ways to work with your suppliers in ways that make sense for your business and boost the sustainability of both parties. Why not engage in joint projects, like finding smart collaborative ways to reduce food waste and/or packaging? You can also join industry networks (like Food Made Good!) to share best practices and learn from other restaurants and suppliers.

Other relevant groups and networks

Speaking of which, do some research into relevant groups and networks with whom you could form relationships. Local business networks are a great place to start.

The University of West London collaborates with groups that are passionate about healthy and sustainable food – such as the Ealing Food Partnership, Cultivate London and Ealing Transition – which allows them to engage in meaningful discussions, share insights and foster a culture of continuous learning. “Supporting the community is not just about running a business; it's about fostering a sense of connection and shared values,” says Peter Cross, Senior Lecturer at the London Geller College of Hospitality & Tourism. “By supporting our community's values and aspirations, we strengthen our commitment to creating a positive impact beyond the confines of the restaurant.”

This month on our social media, we’re all about Support The Community! Join us on Instagram and LinkedIn and sign up to our newsletter for more advice, insights and real-life examples of ways hospitality businesses around the world are finding new ways to forge stronger connections to their communities. You can learn more about this area of the Food Made Good Framework here.