Free Range Chicken

The recent series on TV by Jamie and Hugh F-W has had a remarkable response in the supermarkets. Animal welfare is back on the agenda now and not just because of a respect for living creatures, but also because these higher welfare animal production methods actually result in a product that tastes better and does us more good (grass fed cattle are higher in Omega 3 than barn reared and fed). What is interesting is that although the majority of the nation is waking up to buying more responsibly in their everyday shopping this does not cross over into the meal replacement market. There are many gastropubs that have been championing free range etc. for years (us amongst them), but look at the growth in popularity of say Dominoes, Pizza Express, Gourmet Burger Kitchen. Look at the ingredient list for Dominoes and see that their broiler chicken comes from Thailand. In fact, in the majority of household named take away's and food delivery companies (e.g. Bombay Bicycle Club - a very well respected Indian food delivery business - owned by the same people as Gourmet Burger Kitchen) don't use free range chicken in their restaurants. How many people ask them the question? Not many I am told.

We don't get asked a lot either. I had thought for a while this was because we were good at advertising the fact that we only source free range meat but perhaps it is because people just have not made the leap to suggest they have choice when eating a meal replacement - whether in a restuarant or take away/food delivery that the meat is free range. To make the most of supporting Hugh we should all ensure that when we order food, wherever it is, we are sure of the provenance of that food. Hugh's Chicken Out Campaign has demonstrated very clearly that left to the maufacturers, caterers and supermarkets that the quality of our food, from how it is sourced to how it is cooked can become so out of kilter with how many of us used to beleive things were. We had trusted these people to act responsibly and they chose not to, in the pursuit of profit. It seems that the only way to change this is from consumer pressure - so come on, next time you eat out or eat a ready meal or take away, make sure that you know the provenance of the product.

Pig Industry in Crisis

This is important. It amazes me how many intelligent people just cannot get their head around the issue of cheap food. We struggle as a business to convince our potential customers that the high levels of animal welfare and cost of raw ingredients that we use are important. Not just for health as that is obvious, but for our national landscape.



We at SCOFF support all these artisan producers whom are being hit so hard and it is about time that everyone woke up and understood the issues.



Please ... If you can spare 5 minutes then read the following article to find out what is happening to the industry and then make informed decisions about where you buy your meat, supermarkets or farmers markets/butchers?



Telegraph Pig Crisis

Where does the time go!

It has been a long time since I managed to write anything down here! Having had a few days off over Christmas I enjoyed reading the papers and having time to relax - but then an article in one of the Sundays announced that if you were to have a blog then you needed to update it everyday! Well, I know quarterly updates are probably too infrequent butv every day - I wouldn't have time to run the business.

It is pretty hectic and 2008 has kicked off really well with 3 new arms to the business: school food (kidsscoff), business food(cityscoff) and pub food (pubscoff - back where we started!)

We started providing school lunches at Eridge House (www.eridgehouse.co.uk) in Fulham at the start of the year. The lunches have been a big hit with the kids.

We are about to start supplying food at The Bricklayer's Arm's (www.bricklayers-arms.co.uk) in Putney from Monday 21st January. This fantastic real ale pub is the perfect place for Scoff and we are very excited to be able to work alongside Becky and her team at the pub.

..and to finish off last week we managed to feed 170 people in a Berkeley Square office with only 24 hours notice (which entailed a trip to Devon to restock chicken from Creedy Carver and vegetables from John Rowswell).

So all good, more to come soon..........