Better Things to Do – An Apology

Have just spoken to JJ, one of my team in Fulham. Great hard working law student who earns some extra money working for us (and full time now his exams are over). Last night, while delivering some hot food to one of our customers the police decided to pull over our delivery bike. To everyone in London it is pretty clear what a hot food delivery bike is. Clearly, the driver works for a company and therefore if not being ridden correctly the company will be liable. It was being ridden responsibly.

On this occasion the police informed JJ it was 'just routine'. Perhaps I'll try that one when they are apprehending real crime, ask for routine directions or something. The bike was fully insured, MOT'd, driver full UK license and driving correctly. In the nicest possible way JJ asked them to hurry up as he had hot food being delivered. To no avail..... So apologies to our understanding customer who had food delivered a little late (though still hot thanks to our hot bag technology!). It is nice to know that crime levels are now so low that the police have the resource to interrupt business' just trying like mad to deliver great service and so hope to survive the recession.

Steve 29.06.09

p.s. Also according to JJ a mate of his got burgled recently but the police could do nothing because 'looks like the robber wore gloves'. In a society that is now watched by CCTV everywhere it appears the old fashioned sleuthing ability has disappeared and we can only rely on recorded evidence. Perhaps this approach has freed up time to concentrate on pulling over perfectly legal drivers for 'routine checks'

Discover the London Takeaway without all the Blood, Sweat and Factory Farmed chicken

 

BBC 3 is showing the final episode of their Blood Sweat and Takeaways documentary series tonight at 9pm. This series follows a plucky group of British volunteers discovering first hand the human cost involved in the production of some of the most popular takeaway ingredients. Tonight the focus is on Thailand's chicken industry, much of which ends up in food in Britain, despite us having a fully developed British chicken industry.

 

The programme is sure to build on what the earlier programmes have convincingly demonstrated: that we are not paying a fair price for our food, and that it has become so cheap that a) we are eating too much and b) wasting too much (around a third of the food we buy is wasted – source www.lovefoodhatewaste.com).

 

All the sentiments highlighted in these programmes are very strongly felt by husband and wife team, Steve and Sarah Rushton. So much so that they sold their two thriving dining pubs in the West Country specialising in simple, local food (and voted Archant's Devon Life Dining pub of the Year 2005) and invested everything in Scoff, a radical new, ethical takeaway/home delivery business, in order to demonstrably do something more about this issue.

 

Sarah Rushton commented "We wanted to make better food more accessible so decided to take our honest, home cooked grub prepared with the best local ingredients out of the gastro pub niche. We came back to London and launched it in the wider takeaway and home delivery market. Our food is the embodiment of real food with all our meat sourced directly from small, traditional farmers doing things properly and with whom we have had a relationship for a number of years. For example, we only use free range chicken from Creedy Carver in Devon. These ingredients have never before been found on a takeaway menu but place an order with Scoff and within the hour you could be tucking into a free range chicken and ham pie or superb coq au vin in the comfort of your own home. This is such a stride forward from the normal, poor quality options available when you want a night in."

 

Tonight's programme will highlight the very bottom end of global chicken production but we also have our own British intensively farmed chicken industry which has received a lot of coverage through Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chicken Out! campaign.

 

Information from the Compassion in World Farming organisation tells us British consumers increasingly want their food to be healthier and more ethical, as well as tasting good. Sales of higher welfare chicken rose by 42% between December 2007 and December 2008, with a decrease in sales of standard chicken in the same period. Many consumers are also beginning to understand that because free-range chickens live healthier lives, they are healthier to eat. Free-range chicken meat contains less fat, more protein and more Omega-3 than intensively-farmed chicken meat.

 

Sarah Rushton adds "Here at Scoff we are in no doubt that

free-range chicken is the healthiest and most sustainable way forward. Our service means that the growing number of people who do care about what they eat no longer have to compromise when they want to enjoy a bit of convenience. We have truly taken the junk food out of the takeaway."

Blood Sweat and Takeaways

If you are planning a night in tonight and wondering if anything good is on the box you might want to tune into Blood Sweat and Takeaways on BBC3 at 9pm.

Following on from the BAFTA nominated series, Blood Sweat and T-shirts which showed the human cost of our cheap clothing, the team turn their attention to some of the fast food industry’s main ingredients over the next 4 weeks. 6 young volunteers have travelled to SE Asia to live and work (or should that be slave?) alongside the food workers to see who bears the real cost behind the production of tuna, prawns, rice and chicken enabling us to eat so ridiculously cheaply.

We are delighted every time the true costs of overly cheap food are brought into the spotlight. Steve and I set up Scoff because we are passionate about making it easier to eat better quality food and to rally support for sustainable farming practices on our own shores that have almost become extinct in the quest for cheaper and cheaper food. More often than not this cheap food is also nutritionally light so we are now seeing a situation in the Western world where on average we are over fed but undernourished. It’s just wrong. Things have to change for the good of our own health, the environment and to put a stop to the exploitation of people in developing countries.

For the record, here at Scoff we deliberately don’t use tuna or prawns (we did have some great garlic creel-caught Scottish langoustine on the menu when we first opened but unfortunately they didn’t prove popular enough due to price and because people would have preferred them served already shelled which, of course, would have bumped the price even higher with the labour cost). All our chicken is free range, enjoying life wondering around Peter and Sue’s Devon fields and our all our rice is organic and sourced from Essential Trading, a wholesale co-operative which strives to be a truly ethical company supporting the principles of fair trade.

I would also like to emphasise that we do not in anyway feel that ethical sourcing ever comes before good cooking and top notch service. If we ever inadvertently slip up on these two vital aspects of our whole raison d’être, please, please do tell us so we can put things right. Occasionally things don’t go according to our best laid plans because of genuine human error, but never because we are sitting back on our ethical laurels and taking it easy.   

If you do get a chance to watch it I would be very interested to hear your thoughts (if you wanted to feel really smug you could try watching it whilst tucking into some Scoff!). You could post a comment on our blog at www.scoff.co.uk and start a bit of a discussion.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and whether the series makes you think twice before buying a tuna sandwich or ordering a curry or Chinese takeaway from that cheap place down the road!  

Sarah May 2009