Foodbuy is looking at ways to drive and celebrate the diversity within their supplier base as well as ensuring the team support increasing client requests for regional and ‘innovative’ solutions that support their sustainability journey.
Smaller businesses often don’t have the resource to succeed through a traditional tender process, so through Pitch Social, Foodbuy hopes to develop new partnerships to create further positive social and environmental impact.
Kevin Watson, net zero lead at Levy UK + Ireland, commented: “We have a strong ambition to be climate net zero by 2027. Today’s event which is the first Pitch Social that Foodbuy has arranged, will really help us understand the different diverse range of products coming to the market and it was great to see the event with a broad range of drink, food and FM suppliers bringing innovative solutions that will help us get towards our sustainability goals.”
The Pitch Social event took place on Tuesday, 29th November at the KIA Oval, London. The event included 18 social enterprises, B-Corps and minority-owned businesses with a high social and environmental value agenda. They were invited to pitch their business to a panel of Foodbuy stakeholders to highlight the amazing work in their respective fields, with the opportunity to be listed as a Foodbuy supplier if successful.
Anne Simonnet, Foodbuy’s head of sustainability and compliance, said: “The sustainability team and I are very happy with how well the event went. There was great interaction between the different stakeholders and companies invited, but also among the prospective suppliers themselves.
“Social procurement plays a really important role in our business and the true success of the event will be to recruit as many relevant new suppliers as possible and more importantly to see consistent spend going through them.”