Marketplace

We are passionate about providing quality products and services to our customers, and, as part of this, to offering our customers healthy choices. We are also committed to ensuring the safety and sustainability of those products and of the supply chain behind them.

Our colleagues focus on customer satisfaction as their top priority. We ask customers to give us feedback using our ‘Eat on the Move’ platform, which is used in most of our global markets and helps us to review our performance and identify ways to improve the service we provide.

Healthier choices

We design product ranges and menus to offer our customers choice, including healthier choices, such as lower fat or lower sugar options and are quick to respond to new trends, such as the growing demand for vegan food.

Fat and sugar reduction in the UK

In our UK business, we have undertaken a number of actions to cut the fat in our products, for example, we have reduced the portion size we offer for French fries across our whole estate, leading to a reduction in overall fat content of 42 grams per serving. Within our Burger King units, we have removed the Super-Sized Meal from all our combo offerings. Where baguettes, burgers and sandwich recipes call for mayonnaise, we now only use light mayonnaise. We have also undertaken a number of actions to cut the sugar in our products, for example, reducing the portion sizes of 60% of our cakes and pastry range, which has resulted in a sugar reduction of 49%. On our meal deal offers, we only include water and sugar-free soft drinks as part of the deal.

Growing demand for meat-free food

Many of our customers are also looking for more meat-free options on our menus, recognising that this can have both health and environmental benefits. We have responded to this trend with the introduction of a wider range of vegetarian and vegan options.

In the UK, Pasty Shop offers a vegan vegetable pasty and in Upper Crust, we launched our new vegan baguette featuring vegan feta and olive tapenade. We will continue to expand our non-meat ranges within our UK coffee, bakery and bars, where menu changes will see the vegan and vegetarian mix increased to 25%. The SSP Nordics team has created a new bespoke brand, Haven, focused on fresh, simple foods based around fruits, vegetables, nuts and pulses. Nearly 25% of the menu items in our Oslo Airport unit are vegan. We are rolling out this concept further across the Group.
Ethical trade

Our Supplier Code of Conduct and Human Rights Policy outlines our commitment that the people working for SSP and for our suppliers are to be treated with respect, and their health, safety and basic human rights must be protected and promoted. We require that our suppliers strive to comply with the Ethical Trading Initiative base code, which SSP has adopted as our international standard, and with all relevant local and national laws and regulations. This applies across our global business.

Our aim is that all of our suppliers around the world understand and comply with our Ethical Trade Code of Conduct and Human Rights Policy. Almost 90% of existing global suppliers (by value) have signed up to our policy, and it is built into the contracts for new suppliers. We require suppliers to share their ethical trade audit performance with us, often using the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (SEDEX) platform. Around a quarter of our global suppliers (by value) share their audit data with us via SEDEX. We continue to work with the management teams, in particular in those countries deemed to be high risk for ethical trade and modern slavery, to ensure that they can assess the risks in their supply chain and that appropriate controls are in place.

In line with the requirements of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, we also operate a due diligence process to ensure that modern slavery risks are closely monitored within our business and supply chain. Further detail on our approach is provided in our separate Modern Slavery statement.
Responsible sourcing

Our Responsible Sourcing Policy outlines the standards which we expect our purchasing teams to implement when sourcing ingredients for our menus. Our objective is for the products we sell to come from sustainably managed sources wherever possible and appropriate standards of animal welfare upheld.

Hot beverages are core to SSP’s ranges worldwide, and we are committed to using tea, coffee and hot chocolate produced in accordance with ethical and sustainable standards, such as the Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance certification schemes. 78% of the hot beverages purchased for our proprietary brands are now from certified sources under schemes such as Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance.

The welfare of farm animals is important to SSP, our customers and stakeholders, and it is a core part of our responsible sourcing strategy. We continue to work with partners such as The Humane League to help us improve animal welfare practices across our global supply chain. We expect our suppliers to meet or exceed the standards within the ‘Five Freedoms’ concept proposed by the Farm Animal Welfare Council. Further details on our animal welfare standards are included in our Farm Animal Welfare Policy.

Our target is that 100% of the shell eggs and liquid egg products used within our global proprietary brands are from cage-free sources by 2025. We are already making good progress towards this objective and we expect that, by the end of 2020, all of the eggs purchased in our businesses in Cyprus, UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland will be from cage-free sources, with other markets also making good progress towards the target.

Improving the conditions for broiler chickens

Building on our existing animal welfare commitments, we have made a further commitment to help improve the conditions for broiler chickens across Europe through our adoption of the European Chicken Commitment (ECC). The ECC is a set of six aspirational standards that focus on a transition to breeds with better welfare outcomes, increased living space, greater environmental enrichment and more humane stunning methods. SSP has committed to work with our suppliers to meet the standards set out in the ECC for 100% of the chicken meat we source for our proprietary brands in Europe, by 2026.

Marketplace

Healthier choices

Ethical trade

Responsible sourcing