In the run up to March 2020 we had so much planned to make 2020 the year where we shared and discussed all things on sustainability that reached our customers in interesting and digestable ways! Tribituaries with Ray Foley was just kicking off with a super line up of conversations on nature, Patrick had started his podcast “Please Wait To Be Seated” with plans to interview everyone from our suppliers, to our guests and we were brainstorming ideas on how we could make “sustainability” more tangible in how people experience Good Day Deli day to day during service!
So much has changed since then. But, we can’t wait any longer for lockdown to end because who knows when that will be. So, Aisling, who you all know as an amazing front of house team member in Good Day Deli, has started a blog sharing snippets on sustainabilty. Aisling, hailing from Kilkenny, but now firmly rooted in Cork, is super interested in sustainability which she loves being able to explore in Good Day Deli. For the next few weeks, Aisling will be writing a short blog post each week covering anything from Sustainable Fishing to Veganism. This week, Aisling is kicking things off with a blog post on the topic of Production and Consumption, one of the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.
Hope you all enjoy!
PRODUCTION + CONSUMPTION
Good Day Deli’s ethos has always been to make good food choices for ourselves and for the environment, to make food choices that nourish our bodies while positively impacting our habitat. This mindset is prioritised in all aspects of Good Day Deli and imbibed throughout the restaurant in all aspects of production and service. Sustainability as an ethos requires effort, commitment and patience, something the team at Good Day Deli are no stranger to! Beginning a journey with sustainability does not mean you need to immediately go home and purge your home of all plastic and reinvent yourself as a zero-waste household by tomorrow. The simplest way of trying to live a more sustainable lifestyle is to begin with your choices in food, making conscious choices about where your food comes from and how it was produced.
In 2015 the UN released its 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, it is an agenda adopted by the United Nations to ultimately promote peace and prosperity for the world and unsurprisingly, food consumption and production are heavily featured. While Good Day Deli can’t be a frontrunner in terms of all of the goals, we continue to do what we do best, promote good food choices with our delicious menu and ingredients, aim to drive demand for sustainable food and spread the word!
The UN’s 12th Goal for Sustainable Development is to “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”. To us, this means using produce that is grown locally, organically, seasonally and ethically produced as much as possible as well as using these resources efficiently and limiting waste. Locality and provenance ensure GDD’s food is as fresh as it can be by shortening the supply chain and cutting out air-miles as much as possible. Furthermore, this strategy promotes local suppliers who are celebrated in every dish.
Long-term trade relationships and friendships are formed with our suppliers, some of whom we’ve worked with since opening in Dec 2017. For example, Colm from Horizon Farm in Kinsale provides us with the best quality leafy greens for our dishes. He has been using natural methods to farm for over 10 years and dedicate 10% of their farm to biodiversity, feeding and sheltering pollinators; bees, insects and birds. Richard’s Farm is a certified organic farm based in Mallow and supplies us with an abundance of both Irish and imported organic fruit and veg. Other local suppliers include Meallagulla Orchard who supply our delicious apple juice and apple cider vinegar fresh from their luscious orchard 25 minutes away in Ovens, Hayley Power who hand blends our beautiful organic loose leaf teas in Cork, and fresh fish caught off the coast of Cork by Ballycotton Seafood in the English Market.
While we are lucky that Ireland is a bountiful country in terms of our produce, it is lamentable that we don’t have the weather to grow the coffee beans we are so passionate about in Good Day Deli. Luckily Tony from West Cork Coffee does that bit of the work for us; sourcing organic and ethical coffee beans from all over the world that hold the wellbeing of the farmer, the land and the community at the fore, roasting them to perfection and hand delivering them to Good Day Deli, where he will usually stay for a coffee and a chat with the team.
If we don’t have the weather for coffee, that means unfortunately grape vines for a GDD brand wine aren’t exactly feasible. Fortunately we work closely with the team at Le Caveau Wine Merchants to choose the perfect organic, biodynamic wines to pair with each of our delicious dishes. While these products are not local, we seek out only the best and most sustainable produce from the countries where they out-source, thus not only promoting the message of sustainability at home, but driving the demand in other countries too.
By working suppliers that are smaller, eco-conscious producers and located close to us, not only are we ensuring that our environmental impact is lower, but these close friendships give space for collaboration and innovation with our suppliers and therefore we provide the best food and experience we can for you!
