Sustainability remains important to diners, but at Restaurant Associates we’ve noticed a meaningful shift in how people think about it. Fewer people now believe their own individual choices can meaningfully shift the bigger environmental picture, which means the old approach of asking people to simply ‘care more’ isn’t enough on its own.
What people actually respond to
Recent research backs this up: only a small share of diners name a venue’s ethical or sustainability credentials as a top reason for choosing where to eat. But waste reduction stands out as the one sustainability action people consistently see as genuinely worthwhile and easy to understand.
Plant-based eating tells a similar story. Most people remain unconvinced by meat substitutes specifically, but there’s real appetite for familiar, satisfying vegetarian and vegan dishes that don’t try too hard to imitate meat.
Visible, local, understandable
Carbon labelling, by contrast, still confuses more people than it convinces. The more effective approach is to focus on sustainability actions people can actually see and understand: cutting food waste, sourcing from local and small producers, and telling those stories simply and visibly, rather than relying on abstract metrics alone.
At Restaurant Associates, our sustainability commitments are already woven through how we source, cook and serve. The next step is making sure our clients and their teams can actually see and feel that work, not just take our word for it.
