5 sustainable catering services
07/09/2023
Whether it’s a small party or a big event. At a wedding or company team building activity. Food brings people together at the table and
Padaria Portuguesa’s Christmas campaign is run in partnership with Refood, with the aim of attracting new volunteers to get more people involved in the fight against food waste.
Peggada sat down to talk with Hunter Hadler, founder of Refood, and Rita Neto, marketing and communications director of Padaria Portuguesa, about everything that is already being done and the desire to do even more.
“Rita, the first presents have arrived,” says Hunter enthusiastically. He takes his cell phone out of his pocket and shows Rita the photos revealing that the first toys collected by Padaria Portuguesa are already arriving at the Refood offices.
Hunter Hadler is the founder of Refood and Rita Neto is the marketing and communications director of Padaria Portuguesa. The professional marriage between the two companies has been going on for years. For at least the last five years, the bakeries have also been collection centers for toys in good condition, so that Refood can distribute them at Christmas to the families they support all year round.
“Our venture was very natural, and we’ve been working together since the start of the two projects,” says Hunter, “Basically, we have interests that intersect: Refood wants to partner with companies with surpluses and strong socio-environmental policies.” “And Padaria Portuguesa has fought from the start to ensure that the food never goes to waste,” adds Rita.
That’s why, as well as collecting toys and giving Refood (and other organizations) what’s left over every day in each store, Padaria Portuguesa decided it was time to do more. The company’s Christmas campaign involves new volunteers for Refood, with the aim of involving more people in the fight against food waste.
In an emotional film, Hunter Hadler, the founder of Refood, brings to life a Santa Claus who delivers “dreams”, in a story that parallels his daily activity of delivering meals. Wearing his white hat and pedalling his bicycle — which is still do this day his mode of transport through the streets of the city — Hunter started collecting food from cafés and restaurants, creating an organization that has more than 60 branches across the country and helps more than 8,000 people nowadays.
“I just wanted to make sure with the director that I didn’t have to wear a red suit or say ‘oh oh oh’,” he jokes.
In addition to the film, at the Padaria Portuguesa counters you’ll find a flyer with a QR Code for the link to sign up as a Refood volunteer. And there are also boxes of special Christmas cookies on sale in all the bakeries, the purchase of which reverts €1 to the cause of combating food waste.
Combating food waste
For 12 years, Hunter has been running the streets of Lisbon looking for surplus food from restaurants to give to those in need, and he notices an evolution in the fight against waste. “At first, I was seen as the weird foreigner who dressed in white and rode a bicycle for food,” he playfully adds. However, he recognizes the obstacles companies face in taking a step forward in the fight against waste.
“Big companies want to make a profit. That’s the ultimate goal. And even when we go to present ourselves to a new company and say that there are no costs involved in this partnership with Refood, and that the logistics are simple, we may even get a director to say yes, but there’s a whole management team that has to agree too. It’s not easy to reach a consensus and combating food waste isn’t always a priority,” he says
There is an evolution, but Hunter believes that without a proper law, society will not move forward. “We need the law passed in August that regulates the donation of food by companies to be set in motion,” he said.
Halfway through the conversation, we teased both with a little provocation: instead of thinking about how to dispose of waste, shouldn’t we adjust stock and produce less? Rita Neto has the answer.
“Padaria Portuguesa revolutionized the bakery and pastry shop market a little, it professionalized this sector. Fourteen years ago, the pastry shop windows at 4 p.m. no longer had cakes, they had cans of Coca Cola and Sumol,” he recalls.
Padaria Portuguesa was born following three premises: to create pleasant places to be, to have its own production and to have fresh products all day long, explains Rita. “If the store is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., it has to have products until the end of the day. Not everything, of course, but the essentials: bread, whole cakes, the brioche croissant or the Pão de Deus, two of its iconic products. We squeeze to keep it to a minimum, but of course there’s always enough left over.”
At 8pm, the first people to choose what’s still in the window are the employees. Then, some of it is parceled for the Too Good to Go boxes and, after that, volunteers from Refood, parishes and other associations come in to dispose of the rest.
This cycle is based on volunteering — and Hunter makes an appeal: “We’ve noticed that the central areas of big cities have fewer people and less willingness to volunteer. That’s why parishes like Santa Maria Maior, Campo de Ourique, Santo António and Estrela are some of those most in need of volunteers.
A sustainable bakery — also on a social level
Following the logic of the circular economy, with measures adopted on a daily basis, Padaria Portuguesa has given waste a second life. Every day, around 280 kilos of organic coffee grounds are reused, generated by more than 19,300 drinks served in the stores, and then used as fertilizer, giving way to NÃM’s signature fresh oyster mushrooms. These mushrooms are used in pies, sandwiches and salads.
They also make an orange jam from the peels that are reused from the juices. With the peels of 1,500 oranges, A Padaria Portuguesa produces around 750kg of jam. The bread that isn’t sold in the store is made into artisan toast. The logic of reuse goes even further and also extends to apples, where approximately 22 kilos of apple peel, from the juices served daily, are transformed into 4.5 kilos of apple flour which, in turn, is used in the Apple Areias and in the base of the Lemon Pie Merengada, products made in the brand’s local factories.
However, since sustainability is based on several pillars, including social sustainability, we asked Rita if there had been any developments since 2017, when Nuno Carvalho, CEO and founder of Padaria Portuguesa, said in an interview that he valued “making hiring, firing and working overtime more flexible”.
The marketing and communications director replies: “I can assure you that there is great concern for the people who work with us and there are various internal programs that we don’t usually publicize,” giving two examples: the “Dar a mão” project, which sponsors long-term treatment for employees’ immediate family members; and when a child is born to one of the employees, a kit is given to the family.
“Our pyramid is very flat and we have a close relationship. There is genuine internal concern for all the workers,” she says.
Marta Cerqueira is from Minho and vegetarian. Luckily, she lives in Lisbon, where there is more tofu than sarrabulho. She has been a journalist for over 15 years, the last of which writing about food and sustainability. Now, out of the newsroom, she continues to write whenever she can, be it in magazines, journals, post its, or on her Instagram page, which she uses to share a life divided between being a mom-person-foodie-traveler. Still, she created Peggada so she could write about what doesn't fit in a magazine, journal, post it or Instagram: a better world.
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