Hey there, everyone. Welcome to another HeadBox webinar, driving bookings with a menu that cares. I'm Ryan, your host for today, and I'm delighted to have all of you here for this exciting discussion on sustainability in the events world.

In this day and age, sustainability isn't just a buzzword. It's a fundamental shift in how we approach business, events, and life itself.

With many of our head box business clients committed to net zero by twenty twenty five and embracing sustainability goals, it's crucial for events, professionals to be proactive, aligning with their customers' needs. Sustainableability isn't just a nice to have for corporate bookers now. It's a deal breaker.

Today, we've got two amazing guests with us, Jimmy Garcia, the founder of Jimmy Garcia Catering, and Diana, my sales manager at Hilton London Metropole.

They're here to share their insight on making your venue more sustainable and how that sustainability can actually boost your bookings.

We've got some excellent topics lined up today. We'll explore the significance of sustainable F and B menus and how they can be a powerful driver for bookings.

Our guests will share success stories of venues that have seamlessly implemented sustainable menu changes and give actionable tips for how you can do the same. We'll dig into smart ways to save costs while being eco friendly and discuss how you can market your sustainability efforts to potential guests to secure those bookings.

Throughout the webinar, we have Kate on hand to answer your questions and provide further insights.

So please feel free to drop any comments or thoughts you have into the chat.

As always, we love seeing your posts and photos on socials about the webinar. So snap a pic, and let us know where you're dialing in from today.

Together, we will not only explore how to embrace sustainability for the planet's sake. But also how it can be a powerful tool for enhancing your venue's success. Now let's dive in. Our first

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Topic 1: How to infuse sustainability into your menu and venue

topic today is all about how to infuse sustained into your menu and venue overall.

Diana, let's start with you. Two questions for you. Can you tell us about the importance of venues taking sustainability seriously and about the sustainability initiatives at Hilton London Metropolitan Metropolitan specifically around catering? Absolutely. We are seeing more and more now from our organizers, from our clients, from our guests, questions about, carbon efficiency, carbon, offsetting questions about energy, energy usage, certifications, and that's not just coming from kind of further down the line in the planning process. We're seeing that already at inquiry stage. They wanna know ahead of time, who are we working with?

Are you sourcing responsibly? Are you working with local, you know, sustainable partners?

What does your procurement look like? I think that's becoming more and more, important. And it's equally important for venues and suppliers to make sure that they have ESG policies, ESG policies in place to be able to answer those questions and to stay ahead of the game.

At Hilton specifically, we have an ESG strategy called travel with purpose. And the goal of that is to encourage responsible travel and events all around the world. At our hotel specifically Hilton Lena Metropole, we have several initiatives in regards to catering. One of them is in our main restaurant, Tybron Kitchen, ninety percent of the ingredients are sourced from within a, a hundred miles of the hotel. So working with local suppliers, changing the menus to adapt seasons.

One of the ways we work with local suppliers is because being such a big hotel we procure almost as much as three smaller hotels do. So one of the things that we can do that maybe others can't is work with farmers and suppliers that are executive chef Paul Bates has these long standing, long term personal relationships with. One example is Nichola, our cauliflower broccoli, an asparagus farmer. She's based down in Kent. She's in her seventies, and she's still apparently hand cutting asparagus.

Even though she shouldn't.

And that's just one example of how we can then, you know, be in touch with Nicola and say, How's your cauliflower's, harvest going? How is your, you know, if you got more purple broccoli than green broccoli, white asparagus versus green asparagus, And then, you know, if there's a surplus of cauliflower, maybe some ugly broccoli that the supermarkets aren't willing to take, we can say, well, we'll that. We can adapt our menus. We can change instead of having, you know, that type of sprouting broccoli. We can put cauliflower on the menu instead, and we can work with them.

To create our menus. Another way that we can work with partners, in terms of food sustainability is also minimizing food waste. And so we have a partner the Felix project, which we've worked with, you know, for a couple years now and managed to donate over sixty five thousand meals through that partnership whereby we take or accepts leftover food from supermarkets, restaurants, but also our own events, and then cook that, package that, get the team members involved too. And then give it back to the Felix project to donate to the local community. Wow. That's great. Thank you, Jimmy.

You have a strong commitment to sustainability at Jimmy Garcia Catering.

Can you tell us the tell us about the work you do to help your clients implement Well, actually, I think that sounds great from for the Hill, such a massive organization at the Hilton to be, the way of procuring their menus like that actually because for us, the the same idea is that actually seasonal, many should be dictated by the produce, not the produce, not the other way around. And, and so that's what we're finding is that, like, you know, like, you just say, you know, I've got a wide spagas and not any green spagas. So that's a great conversation to then go back and have with the client, and it's almost rechanging the way people think about menus and produce and going and and being in flow with the season.

So our menus are based around, three three pillar approach. All of our menus are. So it's locality, seasonality and respect for the ingredients. So locality, we have a ten mile menu initiative where we champion some of the great best small artists and producers in London.

And we have sparkling wine, which is made in on Lily Road in Fallum, by London Crew. So yeah. And so it's like three and a half miles away. So they they get all of the grapes from the home counties.

So, Essex, Sussex, and all around there, and then they bring them back to Lilly Road to their winery and make a delicious sparkling wine. So what a great story. Right? The Lateria Barata is based in Acton, way out west.

And they use Oxford Buffalo's, and they not only supply us with amazing burrata and mozzarella's, but they also supply like the river So, you know, a Michelin starred restaurant. So, we're in good company.

Cultured London, make Mesa, in London, Alexander, the Urban the Urban, creamery make Alexander cheese in tottenham.

So there's these amazing small suppliers that I really think we should be shining a spotlight on, and that's what we do within the ten miles. Then a little bit further out of field, we have, an initiative that we work with guys called the peasant, which is a, a farming collective in Sussex, and they work with around twenty farms, locally regenerative farms to basically procure our produce. So our vegetables and, fruits and things like that. So, for us, it's really important that that has a story throughout our menus, and it's not just about the food that's on the plate.

It's about telling a tale of all these people, to help get the food to the plate, you know. So that's that's locality. Seasonality, obviously, ingredients taste their best when they're at the height of their season. So that makes total sense as well.

And we're not having to import stuff or having to fly things over from, as far as from Peru, for example, just wait till it's in season in the UK. It'll be great, you know.

So that's the locality and then respect for the ingredients, it's like a nose to tail approach. They're trying to use up every single bit of the animal or the vegetable, the fruit. And I think it's really important to him. But this sounds, you know, might might sound a bit virtuous, but actually, like, even a piece of lettuce, right, a piece of lettuce comes into our kitchen, or the way I see it is that that lettuce has gone through, a sea where someone has actually grown that over three weeks and has nurtured that to where it is. It's then been packaged and then it's been brought to us. Like, the least we can do is make sure we use it and and and make it nice make it nice when it's finished off at the end, you know.

We're almost the custodians at the last point of the of the produce project, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, so that's that's our big initiatives on on on the on those three pillars.

And then we like to do some fun things that we've taken technology into account, really. So We've got an Evo grow machine. So we grow all our micro herbs in our, kitchen, in our in our unit, which is quite cool. So it takes two and a half weeks, seventeen days to get pea shoots from from not to zero, not to to finish, which is quite cool, and an orca machine, which, I think it's quite becoming quite a well known, machine, which basically is a biodigester.

So it takes every single bit of food waste. So scrape plate food. I bring we bring it back to our unit. We put it through the yorker machine and it turns it into gray water, so eliminating the need to go to landfill.

I think is quite powerful. Yeah. That's that's fantastic. I've seen that, implemented at a few venues around London.

Yeah. There's some there there are a few few places doing really well. So, I mean, the the Southbank Center, where we have our pop ups every summer and winter. They they have that, which is great because it's, it's taking responsibility from the source, you know.

Well, thank you, Jimmy.

Do you have any success stories of venues that have? I mean, you mentioned Southbank Center, but venues that have implemented sustainable menu changes, that you could share with us, and what should venues be doing to really make an impact? Yeah. I think, well, I guess, I guess menu changes, is, I guess, tons of suppliers, I guess.

Now, but but let them other of us, the venues we're working, the the cater is coming in and generally would do those menus. But, in terms of, like, the Southbank Center is a great example, like the Orca. I think that's brilliant because that's them taking collective responsibility. They've got multiple suppliers on-site.

But the standard will always the the sustainability standard will always be the same. You know, the food waste standard will always be there, which I think is quite a strong strong message, really. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's good. Yeah. The they're taking ownership. Exactly. I think, obviously, you know, aligning with suppliers that that share those values has to happen because otherwise it's It's all about the whole sustainability chat is about collective responsibility, isn't it?

And everybody doing their bit and everybody saying what they're going to do Yeah. Will make an impact you know? Yeah. Definitely.

No. I agree. Thank you for that. Both of you.

Our second

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Topic 2: How to manage costs effectively while implementing sustainable practices

topic today is a question that many venues on their sustainability journey ask themselves, which is how they can implement these practices while managing costs effectively Diana, let's go back to you. Do you have any advice for venues who are asking this question?

Yes. I mean, there's there's so many things that venues do that we don't necessarily tell our customers about, things that are ingrained into our, our operations or our bill things as well that we just don't communicate. We think it has to be, you know, this massive, for example, food donation project. It could be simple things like, actually, we now have triple glazed windows, which help with our energy usage, and then consequence of that is increasing your your APC rating, for example.

There's a couple things that I see venues doing, one of them, which we do within Hilton is establish a checklist. It's essentially an initiative called meet with purpose, kind of off the travel with purpose. Strategy whereby we give this checklist to organizers and they can help make these, choices for their event specifically. They know their event best, so they can obviously make the, informed decision about what will work and won't work for them. One example is using, China, Bone, or or Crockery instead of kind of single use kind of plant based or, recycled materials to serve your food on.

One our venue does that because it's just easier from an operations perspective, but also you can reuse it. We've got glass. We've got, you know, black plates, white plates, that can help elevate your event and make it kind of customized in that sense. And then on that plate, you put sustainably sourced food or whatever it is. You don't necessarily always need that extra, you know, that beautiful wooden bamboo, serving to give the impression of it being sustainable because actually some councils or some countries or counties, don't actually always have the proper recycling stations to be able to accept those, for example.

Another thing as well is at our hotel, I'm wearing a blazer right now, which is part of our uniform. It's part of our, restaurants. Oh, no way. Uniforms.

Yeah. And this is actually from a company called NACO, which is ocean spelled backwards. The brand is called, reborn under it, and it's essentially made out of British sustainable wool organic cotton, and the lining is all recycled plastic bottles sourced from our oceans. Very cool.

And there's a, there's a kind of storytelling element behind it as well.

Which is this wonderful, founder Zach Johnson is his name based down on the south coast with collecting plastic on the beaches and things like how can I great, you know, instead of just sending it off somewhere? How can I integrate that into my designs? And so I started doing this, and then we went through a mass refurb and we needed stable uniform suppliers, and we found him, got his company on on board and, you know, approved by all the Hilton procurement systems, and now he can supply uniforms to any other Hilton Hotel within the entire portfolio of over seven thousand hotels. And that's a wonderful story of helping the environment, but also helping a a local supplier and a young entrepreneur.

And this is a story that is so easy to tell because we you know, this is our our kitchen team's, blazer, but it's also our front of desk, front house, teams uniforms. It's in this recycled plastic is in our front of house uniforms. It's in our engineering team's uniforms. It's in housekeeping.

It's in kitchen. It's in the waiters and waitresses that you see, the operations teams, uniforms. And that's just living proof of what we do. And it's in that sense, it becomes easy to tell the story and easy to share, tidbits of what we're doing.

That, you know, this was a decision that was already made. I don't have to, you know, for your event specifically, we're gonna buy all these new uniforms. This is what do on a day to day. Yeah.

You're literally wearing sustainability. Well, literally wearing. Yes. Exactly. Oh, that's very cool. That's a smart jacket as well.

And then, finally, there's there's things that Hilton's do across the world, again, that we don't always sort of put in front of the clients, but that is, is just part of, our operations, our daily operations. One of them is being able to offer a digital key instead of the plat kind of normal plastic key card. It's, on the Hilton honors app, you can essentially use digital key to check-in using the app, and then even open your room using the app. And in twenty twenty two, we managed to avoid ninety two tons plastic by offering this digital key option instead. And then finally, we have this amazing initiative across all Hilton hotels, which is the Carbon Mutual Meetings initiative which essentially allows us as a hotel to calculate the carbon emissions generated by your event, and then we will on your behalf purchase carbon credits to offset them at no extra cost to you.

That, again, is something that we do. You don't need in some cases, specifically our hotel, we do that automatically. Don't even have to ask. Yeah.

That is free of charge. Makes a huge impact, and any hotel across the world can supply you with this meetings impact report. So there's things that hotels are doing across the, and venues, that they're doing across the board. All you have to do is and say that you wanna know and put that pressure on them.

If they don't have these initiatives, I'm sure that they do. I think venues have come so far in just the past couple of years. But put that pressure on them because then they have to take it to their stakeholders, to their owners, to their decision makers, and say my clients are asking about this. It's good for business.

It's not just good for the the planet. It's good for business. That will make them change their minds. Yeah.

Ninety two tons. That's massive. That's a lot of plastic that could have been out in the world. Yeah.

Yeah. Jimmy, same question. How can venues manage cost effectively while implementing sustainable practices?

Well, it's it's a bit of a minefield, isn't it? Like the whole sustainability sector of our of our industry is a bit of minefield. I think first of all, you gotta decide you gotta go on the journey. And then, obviously, I think there's the people of this have this, I think, slightly false, narrative that being sustainable is naturally means it's a lot more expensive.

I think it's there's investment that you need to make, and it's that's a time, and that's sometimes in equipment or in in in ideas that you need to start at the beginning. And then like any investment or like most investments, they, you know, they pay dividends down the line. So, an Orca machine, for example, it might cost you a couple of thousand pounds to install it. You then might be paying four or five hundred pounds a month to, to, to keep it running.

But then you are totally eliminating, a waste stream that you have to pay for. So by essence, you're probably gonna it's gonna it's gonna balance out over time and collect if we're doing something good for the planet, which we should be doing anyway. You know, our EVA grown machine, you know, it costs nine thousand pound to buy. But now we are, growing all our own microherbs.

We can, you know, growing about fifty punnets at a time, which would normally cost three pounds upon it. So again, it's kind of balancing itself out, you know.

We actually, we'd we'd just been working on on our pop up restaurants with a company called Scoot. So we do an eco charge at the end of our, end of everybody's meal on a bill. They get an eco charge, which is like a two pound contribution, which plants four trees, which is like a we worked out. That's a basic, basically enough to make your meal carbon neutral.

So people are then all the guests are being invited to opt in at the end of the meal, bit like a service charge as well, and you pop that in and that basically makes your meal It's automatically on, but then you obviously have the option to watch out. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. So so that we hope everybody opts in. Yay. That's the idea. But then we just start moving that over into our events as well. So again, you know, giving we're gonna give our clients the option to, offset the the the the estimated carbon impact of their event. So that in this, almost like empowering that our customers did to be involved as well because that we said before is about collective responsibility.

That's my thoughts on it. Yeah. And I do and I do think, you know, if even if it's a little bit more expense, by, like you just said, it's not just good for the planet. It is good for business.

You know, like, this is what people are wanting, and this is the kind of change that people are asking for. And those who drive it the most, I think we'll we'll get we'll get the business. You know? Yeah.

So I guess for me, like, at what point in the bookers journey? Are you having these conversations with them? Is it from the initial inquiry? Are you are you letting them know about all these fantastic initiatives.

You're taking all these options they have to add on sustainability measures to their event.

When are when are these conversations being? Well, so so obviously our menus generally all lead with that. So, like, our standard menus now have our ten mile kind of pace on there. They will have, you know, information about our loss or our loss.

So in terms of, like, the menu, what we're actually offering, you know, that'll be be there as kind of standard. What we within the best way to, I think, articulate that is is by visuals and people seeing things, and this is how how we get our message across. So the ten mile kind of pay menu, we have a map of London, and we have each supplier dotted around London where an, like, a nice sketch map, each pair dotted around, and then anagrammed off what, what that canopy is. So people can really see that within London, you know, and for a lot of the events people are coming from all over the world, right?

They want to celebrate the best of the city that they're in. So kind of has a double pronged, like, win, you know.

So that's that's how we try and articulate it through people being able to see stuff, and videos as well. So there's an event that we did for, a management consultancy firm, two thousand people last summer. And when they came in with a brief, they told us that sustainability was a really strong part, a massive part of what they wanted to be, talking about for this event. So we created a and this was early enough, you know.

So we created a plant to order concept So we work with the sussex peasant. We, excuse me, we work with the sussex peasant. We identified four vegan ball food dishes where we were going to plant the vegetables for those dishes. So we, planted, what do we have?

We have beetroots. We had, cabbage. We had radishes.

We, and then we we followed the journey. So we followed the journey of them, plead being planted, then growing, then we went and harvested them, and then we, so we took every single bit of those vegetables for the event. So it was basically like a zero, everything that we'd ordered, we took, and then we showcased it onto the event. So it was like a full life cycle of plants and vegetables to that event. Because the game is enough time. Yeah.

The game is enough time, and they told us that they want that they really wanted to champion unability at the forefront of it. And then that was a new initiative that we came up with, but then we were really excited because we were like, wow, like, this is a really strong propositions, be able to put to other people.

But then by aligning, you know, your supply chain, so by having those, people like the Sussex Crescent and by having the local, local, and more local suppliers, then by default, you know, you're gonna be able to have that conversation quite early. And I think getting people excited about it Like, we do, it doesn't mean it has to be, like, everything has to be vegan and vegetarian. That's all. You know, we do a That is becoming a trend though to have those fully vegan or fully vegetarian?

It is. I'll be honest. It's it's not really the, look, we do lovely vegan and vegetarian dishes, but it's not it's not I just still say, oh, it's a bit controversial. Ourselves.

Yeah. Don't have to look at approved. And and and and it's not, for me, I think it's I think it's such a bigger, a wider discussion around sustainability, which is about like we said, you know, staying low to local communities and people who are doing things the right way. And that's that's meat farmers, you know, that's dairy farmers.

That's still and educating the world. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think, yeah, I think it's a really, really, really powerful proposition to do that way.

Like, we do like a south coast fish bar, for example. We got them tomorrow night. South coast fish far. And there, we've got, you know, Xmoor.

We've got a guy from Xmoor caviar coming down to do a little, sample giving, but So caviar, which is which is in Devon. I'm happy with caviar. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. But but caviar that's I'll be there. Who know who knew that caviar, you know, who get caviar in Devon. You don't have to go to Russia or Iran any You know?

Like lobster, for example, we do the whole lobster bar. So you have, like, yes, poached lobster, poached lobster dishes, but then we have a lobster doughnut, which is, where we use the coral, which is, like, the the brains and all the kind of the bits that you wouldn't normally use that goes in. You don't use that to make a mayonnaise for the lobster, and then use the claw meat. Sorry.

We then use the shells to make oils and make a bisque. So the idea is that using the whole lobster by making it fun, and then you might have a diagram of the lobster there and then have all, again, annotated what you've done with all the different parts. And I think it's really easy for people to buy into it if they can see it and get it.

That's great.

I mean, Diana, do you have anything else to add to this? Yeah. I think a lot of in terms of event planning, catering is is so fun. And, but you've already kind of confirmed your event at that time.

We will need some type of food. Yeah. From an event planning point of view, don't always know when you're sending out the inquiry. What will be important to the event?

How is it actually gonna run? How many, you know, I think gone are the days of, like, right. We're having this exact schedule all of three days that we're having the event and then just run it. I think event planners are becoming a bit more creative, and they're also getting pressure from their clients in return to, you know, if we're gonna spend money on this event, it has to be there has to be a purpose to it.

There has to be an experience element to it as well.

So there's the event planning process, which is where we can apply things in the meet with purpose checklist and make sure that we For example, our serving food on on, a crockery instead of single use, plates or something like that. And we have water dispenser machines all throughout the venue.

But I think it's better to be proactive about it and tell people right from the start. This is what you'll get by coming to our venue or coming to our hotel.

So we actually sent out an estimated meetings impact report that I was telling you about four, where we can can gather the the data, estimate how many bedrooms you're gonna have, estimate how many days long the event's gonna be, the estimated dates, estimate a number of meals if you're having a dinner on-site, if you're not. And we send that out together with the proposal. So already in that stage is when we're talking about the carbon footprint of your event and what we can do to help offset it. Yeah.

And then further down the line, it can always, you know, some companies are very interested in food waste, and some companies are very interested how they can get involved with the local community. Some companies are very interested in certifications. So maybe I'll send them, some of our ISO certifications afterwards. But we always always always send out the meetings impact report with every proposal that comes through, whether it be for meetings or events or groups, so just bedrooms, we've made a decision to take that on proactively.

And people might not look at it at the very first date, but at least they know that this is what we can offer. And because you can get it at any hotel worldwide, it's and it takes five minutes to do, really. It's really easy. It's a no brainer, really.

Well, it's it's so important to you because I think the only way to actually implement change is if we are doing something with the data, you have to measure in order to know what your western implementing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I I guess it's really great that Hilton's doing that too because like economy of scale, there's so many hotels, there's so many events you put on. I mean, daily, you know, you have that data. So there's a lot to pull from. Yeah.

I I was saying before that, organizers should kind of put that pressure on on venues as well and ask for information. Yeah. But imagine when you don't have to ask, but the venue comes to you with that information. I know you're gonna ask about emissions.

We made an estimate on, the carbon footprint of your event. This is what it's gonna be like. Yeah. That saves them so much time, and we all know.

I think that can save time. Yeah. No. That's great. Time stress. Fantastic.

Well, thank you both. Our final

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Topic 3: How to promote your sustainable offerings to secure more bookings

topic today, is how venues can effectively promote their unable offerings to secure more bookings.

Diana, we'll go back to you. What are your thoughts on this? Sure. So for me, it's actually two parts. There's a storytelling element to it, which is what I was talking about earlier with the the blazers and the story of how we procured our uniforms because I think clients wanna you know, I can I can send you a page filled with stats on how much energy the hotel uses and what type of certifications we have and the electricity is a hundred percent renewable, like, you know, and that can tell a story as well and be really important? But I think what stays with the customer, what stays with the guest are the stories that they in turn then can tell. My goal is always when I tell the uniform story is that they will be able to tell that to their stakeholders and get them excited about using us as a as a venue.

So besides the uniforms, besides the wonderful Nicola, the cauliflower lady, We also really engage our team members. So one of the things that I think our hotel does amazingly is that we have a committee at the hotel whereby members from all different departments, both front of house and back of house, sales and marketing, kitchen, FNB, all get involved and together, we can actually contribute to community engagement events. Just last week, Hilton had a travel with purpose week, whereby we encouraged team members all across the globe, to come together and volunteer and do something for their community. Over four hundred and fifty thousand team members donated their time last week. And our hotel, for example, we went to a local, community center and, spent time at something called social supermarket, which was essentially helping people do food shopping by groceries.

They pay a little sort of symbolic fee of three pounds, and then they get to come and collect up to twenty different grocery items. And then we had tea and coffee and cakes and stuff with them afterwards. And we spent two hours doing that on Wednesday morning. So we've got the buy in from hotel leadership as well to spend our time volunteering and contributing to the community.

And by doing that, I have a sense of kind of authenticity. I hope when I talk about these things, and I can tell you what it was like to meet with people in the local community, and I can tell you what it was like to go litter picking along the canal, with our partner there. I can tell you what it was like when we packaged fifteen hundred meals for the Felix project because I've been there and I've done it. And so we really wanna spread that around to our team members.

So in terms of spreading the message, one, making it a fun story to tell, but also two, doing it with authenticity and integrity, I think, is important. Yeah. No. That's great.

That's really cool.

Jimmy, I took agree with that. No. I think you're right. I think the the storytelling is the fun bit. Right? You know, that's slightly, that's kind of like, you know, bringing all these bits together in almost providing a platform for for all the producers and the people and the work that you're doing, but trying to make it really easy for people to digest. So I think a lot of that, you know, is in messaging.

And I think with our team as well, something not too dissimilar, you know, we have a, the bodily community fridge project, so we're trying to align now where we drop off food at the end of our event, drop it into the community fridges so that then gets distributed into the community.

And we do something actually in Clapham, got the ace spades, which is a, homeless charity there. So they pay a one pound, a nominal one pound as well, but then they get a a hot meal as they come in. So we, send five of our team every once a month to volunteer there there. I think it's really important, like you say, to to understand that, like, this bubble of luxury events that we live in is not not not real, there's a real world out there, you know, and there's real, like, you know, food isn't just about, like, you know, it's not just about, like, how what we're doing on an event.

It's actually about people's people like, people need to eat, you know, It doesn't go up with that. And I also think in terms of how do you make it, you know, how do you get people engaged? Well, I think it's almost you have to be seen to be to be doing it yourself as well, you know. So we've, invested little bits at the, like, in in in technology, like the Orca and, like, the Evogrow machine, wearing a all my chefs are in a group, called Jimmy's Evogrow.

Which basically is a it's an amazing, little WhatsApp group, and we basically align there where we're with the Evogo guy tell us when to water it or when to change the seeds and do all this stuff. So, again, everyone's brought in, but we try and put, one person in each department kind of as the enforcer, if you like. So, and we always say this to say this when they with our team, like, there's no point in us all having these conversations, if not everybody doesn't do it, you know? Has to be collective from the whole team to buy in, even like turning up on-site with a plastic bottle or like, well, you know, again, it's collectively. We have to make those changes together.

And I think once she kind of buy into it, it becomes really fun. You know, like, that's the whole point. So how and the next next time around, it's like what else can we do and what can we do next and technology in the landscape's ever changing so much. So there's always things on the horizon that are making it easier to to align, you know, with sustainability and with those values, I think.

And with with that also comes diversity and inclusion. I mean, like you were saying, these events that we work in can sometimes be quite, you know, we have, or most of our organizers have a choice if they wanna choose a sustainable venue or or not or a sustainable cater or not. Some people do not have that choice and have to go with what's most cost efficient.

And I think, like you're saying, involving team members, getting them, you know, hands on the boots on the ground.

Actually helps drive innovation as well. What have you seen? What have we seen? I mean, I'm just so inspired sitting here talking to you and hearing about Orca and all the microgreens that you're growing, that makes me wanna do it. Maybe I can bring that back to my team members, and then maybe that will help us innovate, and then, you know, that spurs more innovation in the in the community. And to your point as well, like, as a booker, you're saying, okay, we might be so cost driven that we can't go for the most sustainable option, but we can give back to the community in another way. Exactly.

Which, which, you know, often the discussion is around carbon emissions and data and how can we reduce or or, you know, completely eliminate. But and and that is definitely very, very important. It should be at the forefront. But also, I think, just, yeah, speaking about how we can give back to the local community. I know HeadBox, we work with, the Eastland and Business Association.

We will have students from local, schools come down who, you know, may not know that there is a company like HeadBox that they could get a job with outside of school. So we will show them that there are other roles in, you know, out there than then maybe what is being fed to them or what what those preconceived notions are. So Yeah. Can your engagement activities?

Exactly. All of that contributes to the bigger picture. It's great that they're giving you volunteer time as well to go out and make those sandwiches and, get back to the community like that. So, think from there, we're gonna we've we've overrun a bit.

So thank you very much for sticking with us, and thank you both. I think it's been an incredibly insightful discussion.

And even though we've gone over, I'm sure you'll agree it was worth it. So a huge thank you to you both, for sharing your expertise, your experiences, your insights will undoubtedly, help our audience embrace sustainability in their venues with creativity and purpose.

Before we wrap up, I have some exciting news to share. HeadBox are launching a new feature in the next couple of weeks that empowers venues to showcase their commitments to sustainability.

With this new feature, venues can easily tag their sustainable initiatives, whether it's providing tap water, banning single use plastics, supporting local suppliers or harnessing solar power. It's a fantastic way for venues to swiftly communicate their sustainability practices. To potential bookers, promoting a more eco conscious event experience.

Remember, sustainability isn't just a trend It's a collective responsibility.

Let's continue to drive positive change in the hospitality and events industry. Thank you all for joining us today. See you soon.

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