menuandmore publishes fifth sustainability report
Glutamate-free, consistent reduction of the CO2 footprint per menu and constant conversion to sustainable products: It's all in the fifth sustainability report from menuandmore, the catering partner for school and daycare lunches.
Healthy, varied and delicious: menuandmore's meals provide a balanced diet every day for children and young people who attend childcare programs at schools or daycare centers. This is the customer promise of the provider of catering for children and young people. In recent years, the company has invested a lot of heart and soul in further developing and expanding its market leadership position. The fifth sustainability report now provides an overview of specific activities and projects with a focus on partnerships. And extraordinary achievements are documented in other ways as well: for example, menuandmore has been completely glutamate-free since 2022, demand for vegetarian menus increased from 38 % (2020) to 46 % (2022) during the reporting period, and 47 % of imported products have a credible sustainability label.
Fifth sustainability report with mixed overall results
The fifth sustainability report is the result of many hours of work and a strategy process lasting several months, according to the company. At the heart of the report is a sound materiality analysis. In the analysis conducted, the "double materiality" approach was used to determine the sustainability issues relevant to the company. For potentially material topics, menuandmore had the impact of its activities on the economy, society and the environment assessed on the one hand, and analyzed the impact on long-term business success on the other. Even though, despite the challenging past years, numerous advances and projects could again be implemented, the overall balance on target achievement for the sustainability period 2020 to 2022 does not correspond to what menuandmore had originally set out to achieve - for various reasons.
Global events influence corporate goals
The past sustainability period was a challenging time, says menuandmore. On the one hand, it was marked by the Corona pandemic from 2020 and its resulting long-term consequences, which also presented menuandmore with new, unforeseen challenges. And on the other hand, the war in Ukraine from 2022 onwards led to additional challenges in terms of availability and costs for food and energy. Due to the school closures announced by the Federal Council at extremely short notice from 13 to 16 March 2020, buyers had to be found as quickly as possible for meals that had already been prepared in order to avoid food waste. Thousands of meals were donated to organizations such as Caritas, AOZ, Schweizer Tafel and the Autonome Schule Zürich. A fruitful and cordial partnership then developed with the initiator of the "Food for All" campaign, the former refugee Amine Diare Conde.
Partnerships: "It's the exchange that takes us forward".
The Corona pandemic has once again clearly shown how important it is to stand together and work in solidarity for a sustainable world, it continues. "It is the honest exchange that moves us all forward. And it is the joint initiatives that inspire us and make things possible that we can only dream of on our own," explains Managing Director Markus Daniel. The "Food for All" campaign is - as mentioned - a good example of this. menuandmore supported the campaign for several weeks with 1,000 meals at a symbolic price.
menuandmore has also cultivated existing partnerships and initiated new ones - with the ZHAW, the SOS Children's Village Foundation Switzerland, Caritas, or in the area of digitalization with ProCloud. According to the report, partnerships based on the same value systems make the decisive difference for a joint contribution to a sustainable planet.
Sustainable business is the future
With the introduction of day schools, more and more children in Switzerland are being cared for outside the family. At the same time, the demand and need for healthy, sustainable catering is increasing. With its consistent focus on sustainability for many years, as well as the findings from the past business years, the SME is looking positively into a future of sustainable business. After years of intensive search, menuandmore is moving from its long-standing production site at Sihlquai in Zurich to its new location at ECOPARK TIVOLI in Spreitenbach in 2025. In the company's opinion, it is currently the best address for responsible companies in the Zurich area. In concrete terms, this means for menuandmore: The catering provider can once again improve in many areas from an ecological point of view, where it has reached its limits at the current location.
