At Whitbread Inns we want to be a Force for Good in everything we do. Force for Good is about helping everyone - our guests, team members and suppliers – to live and work well.
We believe in creating an environment where everyone who works for us can reach their full potential, ensuring we reduce our impact on the environment and invest in the communities we operate in.
We care deeply about you, our teams, our communities and our planet. That’s why being a Force for Good is at the heart of everything we do.
Together with our team members, guests and suppliers we’re helping to make a difference for the most seriously ill children from across the UK who are being treated at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). We have proudly supported GOSH since 2012.
Every day, 618 children and young people from across the UK arrive at GOSH. Every day, young lives hang in the balance as patients, families and staff battle the most complex illnesses. Every day, the brightest minds come together to achieve pioneering medical breakthroughs that change the lives of thousands of children.
Despite the greatest challenges a child can face, the hospital is a place where being sick does not always mean being sad. And it’s a place where you’ll find – today and every day - some of the bravest people you could ever meet.
One of our greatest achievements with the charity so far has to be the GOSH Sight and Sound Centre supported by Restaurants and Premier Inn (part of the Whitbread group), which welcomed its first patients back in June 2021. This incredible building is the UK’s first dedicated medical facility for children with sight and hearing loss. In one year alone, the Sight and Sound Centre has seen over 7500 ophthalmology patients, over 3200 audiology patients, treated over 1400 children with Speech and Language Therapy, and much more.
Great Ormond Street Hospital Registered Charity No 1160024.
At Whitbread* we are committed to reducing our food waste by 50% by 2030. A key part of this ambition is working with charity partners such as FareShare who help us to distribute our surplus food to communities and families most in need. In the last year alone we have donated over 260 tonnes of surplus food, or 620,000 meals. We’re donating more every week and are pleased that we can do our bit to make a difference in these challenging times.
As part of our Force for Good programme we passionately believe in serving delicious great quality, affordable food and drink and want to enable our guests to make easier healthier and informed choices with honest, accessible and clear information. We regularly review children’s dishes to ensure that salt, added sugar, and saturated fat levels are kept to a minimum, while ensuring that we still maintain taste and appeal for children. We also support the five-a-day message and offer fruit and vegetables in starters, main courses and desserts.
Animal welfare is a key element of our responsible sourcing programme and extremely important to us. We work with suppliers who can demonstrate their management of good animal welfare in line with our policies. 100% of our raw beef range in the UK is produced to a recognised farm assurance scheme in its country of origin, such as Red Tractor. We’re also proud to hold MSC Chain of Custody status and 100% of our whole fish is certified to internationally accredited sustainability standards.
Reducing our carbon emissions is one of our core sustainability targets and we strive to be an industry leader in this space. We have gained SBTi validation for our overall net zero targets (both near and long-term), the long-term targets commit us to reduce scope 1 and 2 emissions by 99.6% by 2040 and to reduce scope 3 emissions by 90% by 2050. We are working hard to reduce emission across our business, for example, we use 100% renewable electricity in all of our owned and operated UK sites and have been rolling out gas reduction initiatives across the estate, including the electrification of our restaurant grills.
We know how much our guests and our teams care about reducing their use of single-use plastics and we are striving to do just that. We have set ourselves the target to eliminate unnecessary single-use plastics in our business by 2025. Since setting this target we have made bold steps forward but unfortunately COVID-19 resulted in an increase in the use of plastics in the business. However, we will return our focus to our plastic reduction strategy ensuring we can do all that we can to remove single use plastics from our restaurants and back of house.
*Our Force For Good charity work is managed by Whitbread PLC, which includes our restaurants and hotels.
Great Ormond Street Hospital Registered Charity No 1160024.