Natasha Cameris Knight, Head of Partnerships, Food For Thought
This week we met with Natasha Cameris Knight, Head of Partnerships, Food For Thought at their London offices to gain a better understanding of how the organisation works with restaurants.
Hi Natasha, what’s your job?
Well, as Head of Partnerships for the Food For Thought initiative I spend most of my time in restaurants working with restaurateurs developing Food For Thought partnerships.
Why would a restaurant work with Food For Thought?
The Food For Thought initiative provides restaurants with the opportunity to enhance the experience of diners and staff. Food For Thought one of only 61 global partners of the United Nations Environment Programme incurs no cost for participating restaurants and counterbalances the negative effects of food preparation and waste.
How does Food For Thought achieve this?
Each bill presented to diners in participating restaurants plants a single fruit tree. By sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and producing fruit, the trees do all the work offsetting food waste and carbon footprint.
This enables communities across the developing world to be provided with education, infrastructure and thousands of fruit trees. The trees provide a sustainable source of food for these communities, helping to alleviate poverty and reduce the need for aid and handouts.
Green Earth Appeal Planting Trees
How are the trees paid for if the initiative is free to restaurants?
When diners visit restaurants we work with they are mainly dining based on experience rather than price point. This gives the opportunity to offer diners the chance to include a 99p donation included in their bill, which is all we need to plant a single fruit tree for that diner. Through point of sale materials we provide to our partners, the diner knows that this 99p will plant a fruit tree, the environmental benefits of the tree and how the tree will help alleviate poverty for a poor community in the developing world. This means that the diner not only enjoys their meal, they also know they have offset the meal’s impact on the environment.
What partnerships do you already have?
Amongst others, we have a partnership with 3 Michelin starred chef Marco Pierre White. For his restaurant’s participation in the initiative, they were presented with a coveted international environmental award at the Houses of Parliament in November 2014. Other high profile partners are Caesars Entertainment UK (who also won awards) and celebrity chef James Martin, the presenter of BBCs Saturday Kitchen. The Green Earth Appeal, who operate the Food For Thought initiative work with over 180 restaurants.
Marco Pierre White Green Earth Appeal Certificate
How does Food For Thought benefit your partners?
As a partner you will benefit from working with a United Nations backed organisation working on your behalf to engage with existing and new diners, developing your restaurants environmental and social responsibility credentials.
As a partner we help with your restaurant marketing through Smartphone Apps, Case Studies, Social Media, YouTube, PR, Local & Regional Press, Trade Press and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), are just some of the ways we achieve this.
We also nominate partners for Green Apple Awards, which are presented at the Houses of Parliament. To date, Caesars UK have received two awards, including one for planting over 100k trees and Marco Pierre White’s Steakhouse Bar & Grill Nottingham have won one award for piloting the Carbon Free Christmas initiative, a derivative of Food For Thought over the festive period.
If a restaurant partner proves particularly successful, we would invite two members of their team to the prestigious Green Apple Awards.
Currently we are working with the TV Company Orama creating video case studies providing restaurants at no cost with a TV quality short promotional film which we use to promote our partnerships. A good example is the case study video below that we created with Marco Pierre White. Marco’s passion for the work he does with Food For Thought is contagious as his diners eloquently demonstrate.
Now please allow H&C News to plant a tree for you
If you are interested in working with Food For Thought please in the first instance send us an email and we will pass on your details to Natasha Cameris Knight who will then contact you with more information.
We are also delighted to let you know that for each email we pass on to Natasha a tree will be planted for you by H&C News. You will also then receive a certificate confirming that your tree has been planted.
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