Can you tell me a little bit about Vermaat and your role in the organization?
Vermaat is a catering and hospitality company, in the Netherlands, France, and Germany; with around 500 restaurants, and we’re growing every day. We’re active in different sectors, including leisure, corporate, hospitals, retail, and digital catering.
In the leisure market, we have locations at travel spots like Schiphol Airport and leisure restaurants like the Rijksrestaurant in the Rijksmuseum. We also handle hospitality at places like the zoo Artis. Our corporate sector is our main focus, with about 250 restaurants across the Netherlands, catering to various high-tech and corporate companies.
Can you tell me a little bit about Vermaat and your role in the organization?
Vermaat is a catering and hospitality company, in the Netherlands, France, and Germany; with around 500 restaurants, and we’re growing every day. We’re active in different sectors, including leisure, corporate, hospitals, retail, and digital catering.
In the leisure market, we have locations at travel spots like Schiphol Airport and leisure restaurants like the Rijksrestaurant in the Rijksmuseum. We also handle hospitality at places like the zoo Artis. Our corporate sector is our main focus, with about 250 restaurants across the Netherlands, catering to various high-tech and corporate companies.
We also serve hospital locations, providing catering not only for visitors but also for the staff. We have food service and retail locations like La Place, Stach and a daughter company called Join Program, which focuses on digital catering. They deliver food to clients based on orders made through an app, sourcing from a large production kitchen with a big focus on reducing food waste.
Additionally, we handle event catering under the Vermaat brand. As for me, I’m a sustainability specialist at Vermaat. I’ve been with the company for almost eight years, starting in the Purchasing Department as a data analyst and moving into sustainability. I work with environmental data, focusing on plant-based eating, sustainable sourcing, and food waste management. Our sustainability policy, called the Food Vision, started in 2018, and in 2023 we just our second Food Vision for the next four years until 2027.
How did the implementation of true pricing affect the company’s overall sustainability strategy?
We conducted a pilot about a year and a half ago with three products (milk, eggs and croissants) across 13 locations. Customers could choose whether to pay the true price or not, and about 10% opted to pay it. This was during a time of inflation due to COVID-19, which may have affected the results.
Initially, we focused on three animal-based products. Now, we’re including plant-based products, such as oat milk, to highlight the differences in true prices between animal-based and plant-based options. Our goal is to influence customer choices and encourage more plant-based consumption through transparent pricing.
One final question: What are the next steps that Vermaat is planning on taking to upkeep its sustainability mission?
We will have a large kickoff in September with 50 locations, possibly more, depending on client interest. This is our main focus for now, and it’s a significant undertaking for the coming months. While it’s my dream to calculate the true price for our entire assortment, it’s not feasible at the moment due to costs. However, we plan to expand our true price calculations to more products, and more restaurants, each year.
It’s always a big realization when you pick a product and see that so many ingredients and countries of origin are involved. It entails much more than anticipated.
Absolutely. That’s why I’m glad we’ve chosen to look at complete recipes this time around, as it aligns better with our operations than focusing on individual ingredients. Evaluating a full sandwich, for instance, provides more comprehensive insights.