A Force For Good

A Force For Good

Driving a sustainability agenda in an organisation simply isn’t an optional or just a nice thing to do!

You have to have your head in sand (ostrich effect) to not understand potential benefits and risks and to not fully embrace a comprehensive ESG plan.

Ultimately I find it’s an easy area where the major complexities are mostly the terminology and legislation. I have found and proven time & time again that it reduces cost and increases shareholder value and can be easily imbued into everyday activities.

Anyone buying fresh food will be acutely aware of impacts & risks of climate change and need to quickly address and at least play a part in attempting to deaccelerate any impact we make adding to our environmental woes.

There is significant research that shows that a good ESG vision has proven to inspire workforce that results in lower staff turnover driving productivity, increase ‘stickiness’ with customers driving repeat business and ultimately profitability.

We imbued sustainability into our DNA and thus appears in our everyday activities.

So who we are, the approach, what we did and what are results.

Who we are:

In a few years Hana Group has grown from start to over 250 sites in the UK with Genji in Whole Foods, Sushi Gourmet in Sainsbury & Dunnes, Mai in Marks & Spencer, Sushi Kano in Amazon & others with an innovative fresh & hand-crafted healthy offer where customers are voting positively with their feet driving footfall back to stores.

We bring the theatre of Japanese cuisine to UK food halls and foodservice with a healthy & nutritious innovative offer that is changing face of retail and contract catering in a good way. We offer sensational, fresh sushi and hot Asian dishes of outstanding quality and price with clean ingredient decks of raw produce that we cook in stores fresh daily. We work with skilled craftspeople with extensive training in order to ensure a constant level of excellence and expertise and have our own University of Sushi to pass on our skills to 700 new jobs we have created.

Approach:

We signed up for race for net zero and welcomed independent auditing.

What we learned was not to cover scope 1 and ignore rest or do later but embrace all three at same time. Here we partnered with our key suppliers in our kiosk build, packaging & food suppliers and worked jointly on our plan that has accelerated our progress and helped share a joint vision on sustainability.

Then we teamed up with Sustainable X who had a refreshing hands on approach mapping out our plans against 17 UN goals and aided to refine and direct our enthusiasm.

What we did:

??Vision: We set out our policy and targets ahead of the year around the produce we sell, packaging we sell it in and around our most important asset – our people. We achieved goals in each of three pillars through strong vision, teamwork and good processes.

It started with sustainable procurement. Having welfare & sustainability certifications was merely part of our specification mapped out by our detailed Seafood Sustainability Policy. The fish we buy through tender process and by working with many suppliers is cheaper than unsustainable sources proving partnership, vision and tenacity has driven a sustainable agenda whilst reducing cost of goods.

Our tuna is sustainably sourced using round hooks to avoid by catch of turtles, purse seine nets and rod fishing to avoid dragging up seabed and bird scarers to stop albatross & other birds being caught on line. Electronic tagging of boats ensures we fish in sustainable waters and have total transparency.

We visited salmon farms first hand to ensure sustainable feed and standards were up to scratch … inspired by one of the first female farm managers in Norway we brought in innovative ways to stop heat treatment (stressful for fish) and chemicals (bad for oceans) and remove lice in natural proven way whilst strengthening nets to avoid releasing into sea. (Data from our farms at zero loss) Our farms have 1% fish to 99% water It took three days to travel to remote farm in Norway and just two for Scotland but both worth time to ensure first-hand we were exceeding customer expectations and driving sustainability agenda.

It helps our product is healthy & nutritious! Low in saturated fats and sugars, sushi can provide a wholesome, balanced meal with a number of health benefits. Oily fish such as salmon and tuna are excellent sources of protein, selenium and Omega 3 fatty acids, which are essential for the good function of the brain and cardiovascular system. In addition, research has shown omega 3 can help improve mood and memory. Fresh vegetables such as cucumber and avocado contain a variety of essential minerals and vitamins. The seaweed nori is high in iodine which helps to regulate metabolism. Finally, accompanying ingredients such as ginger and wasabi are rich in antioxidants, helping to protect the skin and improve immune function.

We show nutritional value of every product & written a number of articles we share with our customers on health & nutritional values of our hand made products.

Much work in reducing food miles such as sushi rice grown in France and sushi seasoning from UK, soy sauce from Belgium. (non-shipping from Asia) We continue to improve year on year.

We wanted to put healthy, sustainable fresh food into supermarkets and eateries that was made from scratch every day.

Then we moved onto packaging:

Well we changed all our packaging to rPET made from 100% recycled materials that can be recycled again across our entire range of products. Not stopping we then worked with Preventative Ocean Plastics on a dedicated sushi range where plastics are picked off beach avoiding entering sea and creating revenue and jobs for local communities initially in Indonesia. The end result, which is at competitive price, offers an exception quality with superb clarity.

Then we worked with teams and introduced systems to reduce waste also working with ‘Too Good To Go’ to further reduce waste food where over 100,000 meals have been saved to date reducing our carbon footprint.

Our most important asset is our people:

We set up a monthly bonus for our chefs in each store based on commercial target of sales and reducing waste, thus more profitable, by involving our teams in our vision we made huge inroads and our engagement survey showed the feel-good factor as we were rated above typical retail companies in this area of satisfaction as well as over scoring on leadership & communication.

We got teams involved for a few years now with Fisherman’s Mission charity fueling strong financial contribution contribution as well as great awareness for this truly inspiring organisation looking after fishermen risking their lives to put food on our plates and not so long ago during pandemic our teams helped supply sushi to hospitals across the country to nurses, theatre staff, doctors and ambulance crew throughout lockdown doing our bit for these heroes but also driving all important team involvement and feel-good factor.

All our teams get number of benefits from birthday off to extra holidays for long service and everyone gets a day in community. This year from cause related marketing in store allowed us to plant just over 400 trees with fabulous Trees for Cities with our team braving unusually cold Spring planting trees and covering themselves with mud, laughter and inspiration.

We have a number of mental health first aiders (including me!), and we set aside first part of our quarterly inspirational chat (our appraisal) to managing stress and set up help/advice lines for all team members.

We set up a Foundation, funded out of profits of increased sales derived from successful sustainability initiatives for team use in time of need. This trust provided medical treatment, repatriation, funeral expenses, education and other benefits for our teams. It holds reserves for future team needs.

Our health & safety executive includes team members as its set to keep people safe arriving at initiatives such as locator store maps & guides and personal panic alarms amongst other initiatives. Its simple things that make a difference; from chefs who complained shoes weren’t comfortable followed a test of better suited footwear, the end result not only ended with team member satisfaction but saved money for group and of course shoes were made from sustainable materials!

A consumer awareness campaign with posters (over 300 across country in retail partner car parks) was backed up by social media and on kiosk POS that drove double digit growth on 2019 (two years ago) as well as triple digit over last year. All hard work & costs paid off as consumers voted with their feet and that bond with customer fueled sales.

Cycle to Work scheme was launched for all our colleagues, quickly followed by electric car schemes.

Proof of leadership comes from our engagement survey: 81% thought the leaders keep people informed about what is happening and 91% say they know what they need to be successful in their role [ These two are 20% above competitor retail benchmark] 79% state day to day decisions demonstrate that quality and improvement are top priorities and 86% know how their work contributes to the group [Both 15% above competitor retail benchmark] 71% say that the systems and processes here support them getting their work done effectively and their manager keeps them informed 83% [Both 14% above competitor retail benchmark]

On Quality and Feedback:

We launched our own cookbook – Cooking for Soul available on Amazon, TK Maxx and Waterstones that tells the story: Japanese Cooking for the Soul: Healthy. Mindful. Delicious.: Amazon.co.uk: Hana Group UK Limited: 9781529106077: Books

We entered Quality Food Awards & not only won our category but from over 6,000 products won overall. We also won stars at Great Taste, picked up Grocer best new product & recognized Edie becoming a founding member of sustainability club.

Our work on packaging heralded us as Sustainable Brand of the Year.

Our work on our sustainable procurement, our people and community earned us Institute of Directors Sustainability Award

Our constant drive to improve, never be complacent and make a positive difference led us to picking up the Craft Guild of Chefs Innovation in Sustainability Award.

Of course given the above we are enjoying 8 years of positive LFL (with slight blip during covid!) with improving NPS scores that proves what we are doing is working.

It is for us all just the beginning of the journey, we set new targets annually together, remain inquisitive and impatient and embrace Kaizen that philosophy of constant improvement. Sustainability is woven into our DNA in each and every colleague and we will continue to drive innovation, seek new ways of working that will hopefully mean we pass on a slightly better future for our industry and her heart beat of passionate people.

Its an area where we want people to copy us!

We have only got started…