Announcing The Winner Of The Sustainability Award At The NRAs

Why The Bull Inn won the Sustainability Award at the 2024 NRAs

The Bull Inn is an organic, ethical pub and hotel in Totnes, Devon. Guided by a set of ‘No-Bull Rules to Dine, Trade and Work By' that govern dining, trading and working at The Bull, sustainability has been built into the very foundations of this values-led business from its earliest days. The goal is for customers to experience remarkable, impeccably sourced food and wine served by a passionate, highly skilled team – demonstrating that ethical, human-centred businesses can be truly successful while delivering excellence in food, rooms and service.

The aforementioned 'No-Bull Rules’ is a set of policies designed to be robust, rigorous and easily understood. These policies are publicly communicated and ensure that every decision is considered in light of its impact on their team, suppliers and community. 

Here are just some of the many reasons why they deserved this year’s Sustainability Award.

SOURCING

The Bull demonstrates impeccable standards when it comes to how they source their ingredients.

• The sourcing components of the No-Bull Rules specify that The Bull can only buy organic or wild, genuinely seasonal ingredients that aren’t air-freighted or grown in heated greenhouses and are field grown. Over 95% of their food is organically sourced, used to create a daily-changing, veg-first menu.
• All suppliers are vetted and must be accredited or certified by a recognised body.
• The Bull supports sustainable fishing by favouring method over species. This means ensuring the use of small boats (under 10m), no dredging and no beam trawlers, and promoting bivalves as a sustainable choice.
• Around 50% of the produce served in the pub is grown at The Bull’s own farm, with a large part of that coming from an independent grower. The focus is on hyper-local food: out of their 20 food suppliers, 14 are based within 15 miles of the pub.
• An impressive 95% of their wine is organic and the rest is local or natural. All of their draught beers are organic or hyper-local; 90% of their spirits are organic, with the others either local or from within the UK.
• All of their milk is organic and comes from just three miles away.

SOCIETY

Treating staff well is a top priority at The Bull Inn. The management team believes that working in a sustainable business with high ethical standards and a human approach to work makes for staff members who are happier, more creative, more secure and more fulfilled. 

• ‘Being Decent Employers’ is a priority, and this has led to staff retention figures 15% above the industry average. The number of people who stay with the business for 2-5 years sits at 60% – in impressive 38.1% above average. 
• They’ve invested in an Employee Assistance Programme run by Hospitality Action, which offers wrap-around support to the team, including everything from counselling to legal advice and financial assistance.
• They’re also dedicated supporters of education and learning and have invested online learning platform that offers over 730 educational courses, most of which are certified and accredited. 
• All of the team members are local hires, including management, and everyone over the age of 18 earns the Living Wage. 
• Senior management staff members receive a profit share. The long-term goal is for the business to become employee-owned.
• With local housing difficult to secure, the business purchased a house last year for some of the team to rent.

Giving back to the community is also paramount, and The Bull collaborates with local organisations, charities and businesses on various initiatives.

• They provide free use of the kitchen and venue for community groups and events. Since May 2023, they’ve provided 192 hours of free kitchen space to Food in Community, a food box scheme that supplies a network of charity partners working with disadvantaged people. In the same time period, they’ve offered the venue to local community groups for 70 hours and collaborated with local businesses on not-for-profit events totalling 23 hours.
• They’ve also raised £423 for Food in Community as part of the 'Part of a Pantry Campaign' since December 2023, and have donated £2,334 in charitable donations in the form of prizes and donations to local schools and organisations.
• They forecast that – between wages and payments to small local businesses – they will pay out over £1 million into the pockets of local people in 2025.
• They pride themselves on being political. Beyond the socioenvironmental work they do, they champion engagement in politics and have worked on campaigns from encouraging people to vote to challenging the Police & Crimes Bill and calling out the entanglement of water companies, profit and politics. 

ENVIRONMENT

The Bull Inn takes a clever and multi-faceted approach to reducing their footprint.

• All house wine is now supplied in BiBs, vastly reducing the weight of transporting wine. In fact, this small change has resulted in 14kgs of glass NOT being transported for The Bull every week.
• The Bull Inn avoids prepackaged snacks, cling film and bottled water, while blackboards and cork menu covers reduce paper usage. Aprons are made locally from recycled materials and plant-based dyes.
• They use only ecological cleaning products and no plastic scrubbing brushes or sponges.
• The Bull Inn has implemented a heat recapture system in the kitchen (saving on average 22.34 kWh of electric per day), uses solar energy panels for preheating hot water and monitors energy usage in real-time.
• They purchase 100% renewable energy from Ecotricity, saving approx. 43 tonnes of C02 on Scope 2 emissions alone. 
• Two fantastic new initiatives within the last year have had an enormous impact. Installing a voltage optimiser in October 2023 reduced their electrical usage by 12%. In April 2024, they purchased a highly energy efficient dishwasher that saves 0.8 litres of water per cycle; this equates to a minimum of 34,560 litres saved every year. 

The business also supports biodiversity in a number of ways.

• Their 154-acre organic farm, Baddaford, supplies the pub with produce. Here, 80 acres are given over to growing perennial vegetables, which reduce ploughing and hence protect the soil. The remainder is used for agroforestry, regenerative farming and wildlife restoration. 
• They have created three reservoirs to conserve water, which also provide habitats for a huge array of wildlife. They’ve planted spinneys under which the cattle can feed and find shade; clumps of trees like these are better at protecting the soil than single trees. They have increased their number of hedges and planted top fruit orchards. They also keep bees and have a cutting garden that supports pollinators while providing the pub with flowers.
• They’re currently just beginning to record the impact these actions have had on the biodiversity and soil health of the farm, but already report a wide variety of life on the land: hares, newts, stoats, kingfishers, damsel flies, insects, butterflies, slowworms, voles, songbirds, weasels and two pairs of breeding barn owls.
• The land will eventually be given over to a trust to ensure it remains ecologically managed, healthy and alive for many generations to come.

When it comes to waste, The Bull Inn has a ‘don’t use what you don’t need’ approach in every aspect of the business. What they do use is treated with respect and managed with care. 

• The Bull has a zero-to-landfill policy for refuse and recycling. 
• This year, they switched to buying whole animals, such as pigs and sheep, to minimise waste. The cuts of meat on the menu can even change mid-shift as they work through an animal! No part of these larger beasts is wasted, with guests being served everything from pork scratchings to whole roasted pigs’ heads. 
• Food waste is sent to the local Langage Farm, where it is processed in an anaerobic digestion facility to produce electricity, heat and fertilisers. This facility powers the farm, creating the only carbon neutral dairy in the country. 

SPREADING THE MESSAGE

Finally, the team at The Bull Inn does a great job of sharing how and why they make sustainability such a fundamental part of their operations. Their ‘No-Bull Rules’ and ‘Conscious Compromise’ are written on blackboards and included in their in-room guest information. They also talk about what they do on their website and social media and through a regular newsletter. Team members are educated on their sustainability work so that they can relay the details to guests with accuracy and confidence. Opportunities for national and international press are used to promote the idea of doing business in a more sustainable way.

This Sustainability Award is one more feather in their well-earned cap; huge congratulations to the entire team!

For the full list of winners, visit the National Restaurant Awards website. To learn more about The Bull Inn, visit their website or read our previous case study here on how they tackle non-food waste and embrace the principles of circularity.