Last month, Emma Schwarz was among the first 12 people to complete the new Level 3 Award in Regenerative and Sustainable Hospitality, the first qualification of its kind in the UK. Developed in partnership with The Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA), Devon County Council, and the Apricot Centre, and delivered by The Bull Inn in Totnes, the 12-week course covered aspects including the history of food and farming; sustainability and regeneration; biodynamic farming; marketing; and how to run a greener bar.
Schwarz, who runs the The Barn restaurant, cafe, bakery, deli and wine bar in Chichester, has also recently taken up the role of head of fundraising and awareness at global grassroots movement Slow Food UK. She discusses the moves her business is making towards becoming more sustainable, from taking fish off the menu and making three quarters of the food offer plant based, to holding businesses accountable for their actions.
What appealed to you about the course?
Even though I am fairly well read about food and food systems, what’s gone wrong and why we need to care about the planet, I didn’t feel like I had enough knowledge. Also, I’m a big fan of Guy Singh-Watson [founder of organic farm Riverford] and Geetie [Singh-Watson, The Bull Inn owner] so I knew it would be good.
What did you take away from it?
I not only came away with a shed-load of knowledge but also some tools about how we are going to tell our story better if we are going to make a difference in food and why it’s so important to care about where your food comes from. I started the course with a lot of despair about hospitality but ended up feeling more hopeful by the end of it. There are two pincer moves in food at the moment - there’s all the energy around how integral farming is and how we’ve all got to go back to some of the practices of the past, but there’s also so much energy around health and how it’s never been more important to care about what you’re putting in your body. Those two things are definitely helping a business like mine get the message across and people to support us.
What was the key message you got from the course?
To have faith in people and that if you talk about what you are trying to do the customer will respond and support you. I have this underlying faith that things are changing and people are caring about what they are feeding themselves. When you go out and spend £75 on a meal for two and you could have done that better at home you feel ripped off. I know how dissatisfying that is at the moment when times are tougher.
What actions are you going to implement as a result of it?
From March onwards I am going to take the 12 categories from the course and create an internal business plan for change. Basic changes have included all kitchen food waste now goes to our no-dig allotment for compost and I’m trying to correspond with my landlord to get solar panels put on the roof. The course discussed the way different councils recycle and it made me think that I haven’t questioned enough where our waste goes and whether any of it gets recycled. We can interrogate the local council and work with them and not just accept their word for it.
What about your food offer?
I’m almost definitely going to take fish off the menu because we can’t find a suitable supply. We might do a fish of the day on a highly seasonal select basis working with certain fishermen that can guarantee traceability, but I’m being radical and taking it off the menu. Fish is like the wild west in terms of how ungoverned it is. I’m also going to be doing more with wild venison. It is just so ethical and delicious and good for you that we need to eat more of it and make it more accessible. From March, 75% of the menu will be vegetarian. Our customers are ready for it - as long as we make it interesting culinary wise.
Is it easy to source vegetables for the restaurant?
The organic veg scene isn’t huge in this area. In Devon it’s buoyant, but within an hour radius of Chichester it’s not very strong. But there are a lot of growers who have applied as many of the Soil Association principles as possible and which are not using pesticides. We are working even closer with our vegetable supplier Munneries and have narrowed down the best people to work with. We also had a customer donate half an acre of land to us that we have the right to use to grow vegetables. How we source our veg is definitely more expensive for us but we want to have a clear business strategy. I want to be able to look at the plate, know where it’s all come from, know it’s as nutrient rich and healthy as it possibly can be, that it’s delicious and that it’s local. I often think I’m barmy to be in hospitality, but even more barmy to be putting the quality of ingredients ahead of how much money we make because it’s so hard to make money. But I choose to sacrifice that all the time.
Tell us about your new role at Slow Food UK
I’ve been a supporter of Slow Food since 2008, maybe earlier. We are now offering our customers the chance to top up their bill by either 25p, 50p, or £1 with the money going to Slow Food. We get around 1,200 customers a week at peak times so if we can raise a bit of money then that’s great. I’ll also spend one day a month working in London to head up fundraising and awareness.
What’s the first thing on your agenda?
There is really low awareness [of Slow Food] in the South. There are pockets of good awareness, such as in Brighton, but the general population don’t know much about it. My first job is to write the plan of what I want to deliver this year and I’ve got to do something interesting to immediately catapult the awareness out there again.