Announcing the Winner of the Sustainability Award at the 2025 NRAs

Each year, we look forward to judging the Sustainability Award at the National Restaurant Awards — not only because it gives us the chance to celebrate some of the most exciting new initiatives in the industry, but because it reminds us that building a better future isn’t something abstract or out of reach. It’s something shaped by the everyday decisions made in kitchens, on menus, with suppliers and with teams. 

So how do we judge something as complex as sustainability? For the NRAs (and for other awards we assess, like those across The World’s 50 Best’s annual calendar), we draw from the same fundamentals as we do for our Food Made Good Standard: the world’s leading global sustainability certification designed specifically for hospitality. 

Built around three key pillars — Sourcing, Society and Environment — the Standard takes a 360° view of sustainability, covering everything from carbon emissions and supply chains to staff wellbeing and community impact. We judge the Sustainability Award using this same Framework, with a particular focus on ambitious and innovative steps taken in the past year. This year’s shortlist featured five outstanding restaurants, each of which is taking bold, thoughtful steps in all three of these areas. 

The National Restaurant Awards Sustainability Award shortlist 2025: 

While all of these restaurants deserve recognition for their approach to doing things differently – you can find more on why each was shortlisted here – it was The Free Company that stood out for its deep, systemic approach to regeneration, offering a working model of restaurant and farm as one unified, regenerative system. 

WHY THE FREE COMPANY WON THE SUSTAINABILITY AWARD AT THE NRAS 2025 

The Free Company is a seasonal restaurant and working organic and regenerative farm just outside Edinburgh. Their aim is to bridge the gap between food production and consumption, inviting people to eat where their food is grown and to connect with the land, the people and the systems behind every plate. 

They’re not trying to scale; they’re trying to deepen. In the process, they’re helping others to imagine what hospitality can be. 

SOURCING 

The Free Company grows or raises around 65% of what’s served in the restaurant, which sits at the heart of their five-acre no-dig market garden. Seasonal fruit, vegetables and herbs are produced using organic principles and compost is made entirely on-site from garden waste, spent coffee grounds and sheep wool. They focus on hardy heritage varieties suited to their slower-growing Scottish climate. 

All meat is raised on-site from native breeds chosen for their low-impact hardiness, rich flavour and suitability to the land, such as Highland x Dexter cattle, Shetland sheep and Mangalitsa x Berkshire pigs. Sheep and cattle are 100% pasture-fed, moved regularly using holistic grazing techniques that build soil fertility and help sequester carbon. The pigs are soy-free and fed on hay, veg scraps and brewery mash from producers also featured at the bar — an approach still rare in UK systems. 

Whole carcasses are butchered on-site, nose-to-tail, with full traceability. Head Butcher Hannah leads this work with care, ensuring every cut is respected and used. Other ingredients (like grains, dairy and dry goods) are certified organic or regenerative as a baseline and sourced as locally as possible, from suppliers such as Mossgiel Farm, Wildfarmed and natural winemakers across the UK and Europe. 

Circular thinking is built into every part of the sourcing process. Gluts are preserved through fermentation and pickling. Cider is made from fruit rescued from a neighbour’s disused orchard. Coffee was once avoided due to the food miles involved, but now they take a different approach and used grounds are instead given multiple lives: infused into liqueurs, fermented into kvass, used as roasting beds for vegetables and ultimately turned into high-performing seed compost used across the garden.  

Alongside the restaurant, a small delivery-based farm shop connects their produce and that of like-minded local partners with homes across Edinburgh, extending the reach of their food system and helping people make seasonal, responsibly grown food part of everyday life. 

SOCIETY 

The Free Company sees the restaurant as a tool for change: nourishing guests, supporting staff and welcoming the wider community into the process. 

Each service begins with a short introduction from the team, sharing the story behind the week’s menu and the regenerative systems that support it. Over the past year, they’ve hosted more than 300 children from four schools across Edinburgh, welcomed over 60 Scouts from varied SIMD backgrounds and tailored tours and meals to be engaging for younger visitors. Their internship programme continues to grow, giving participants hands-on experience across the garden, kitchen, butchery and front-of-house. 

Knowledge-sharing is central to their mission. Through open days, guided farm walks and placements, they welcome chefs, growers, designers, researchers and students to see and learn from their system.  

Internally, staff welfare is treated with much care. The Operations Manager is a certified Mental Health First Aider, and a culture of openness, support and balance is deeply embedded. Every full-time team member is given up to six days a year to work in another part of the business, whether lambing, preserving, planting or carpentry. This cross-training helps staff stay connected to the full system, prevents burnout and strengthens the seasonal rhythm that underpins everything they do. 

Professional development is encouraged and funded — from skills-based training to peer learning opportunities. The Free Company has followed Real Living Wage structures for years, becoming officially certified within the past 12 months. 

ENVIRONMENT 

The Free Company’s environmental approach is rooted in regeneration — not just reducing harm, but actively rebuilding ecosystems and circular systems that give more than they take. 

Over 5,000 native trees have been planted across the farm, including 4,000 this past year alone as part of a new silvopasture system that integrates trees into livestock grazing. These trees support biodiversity, sequester carbon and offer long-term shade and shelter for animals and guests alike. 

Their compost system returns approximately 300 tonnes of nutrients to the soil each year. It’s made entirely from on-site waste: veg scraps, bones, shells, sawdust, sheep wool and spent coffee grounds. All seedling propagation is done with this in-house compost; no seed compost is imported. 

An off-grid spring beneath the pastures supplies water to the restaurant, filtered with a UV system. A newly installed closed-loop septic system filters all wastewater — including from toilets — to drinking quality before returning it to local waterways. They’ve also asked SEPA for official permission to compost the solid waste left over from their wastewater system. 

Single-use packaging is entirely banned. In this kitchen, you’ll find no tin foil, cling film or blue roll. Toilet tissue and paper towels come from Serious Tissues: 100% recycled UK paper, made using renewable energy. All cleaning and toiletry products are septic-safe and chemical-free, selected to protect microbial life in their compost and water systems. 

This same regenerative thinking applies to how they build. A new extension housing a private dining room and accessible bathrooms was built from materials sourced on the farm: timber from wind-felled trees and insulation made from their own sheep wool.  

All electricity comes from 100% renewable energy via Octopus Business Energy. The team is now fundraising to install a 200-panel solar array with battery storage, which would allow them to become energy self-sufficient for most of the year. 

SHARING THE MESSAGE 

The Free Company makes it easy for people to see what regenerative hospitality looks like in practice. Whether it’s discussing wastewater filtration during farm tours, serving kvass made from coffee grounds or walking guests through a dining room built from their own trees, their restaurant is a space to eat well — but also to ask questions, share ideas and connect the dots between food and food systems. They see their work as open source: a real-world model of what it looks like when every part of a hospitality business is part of a circular system designed to regenerate — not deplete — the world around it. 

Congratulations to the full team at The Free Company — and thank you for helping move the conversation, and the industry, forward. 

For the full list of winners, visit the National Restaurant Awards website. Learn more about The Free Company here. 

Interested in assessing your own restaurant's sustainability? Why not take our free five-minute quiz, Food For Thought?

Photo from The Free Company's Instagram page.