The British appetite for quick, cheap, convenient food that we can eat wherever we happen to be has hidden costs to society, public health and the environment.
This report investigates the economic pressures facing independent cafés and sandwich bars which often forces social justice, sustainability and health off the menu. Being casual about what, when, and where we eat is both a cause and a symptom of the hectic, mobile lives we lead. It helps to shape our aspirations and our sense of identity.
Although casual food is everywhere, the 'casual eating' subdivision of the catering sector is overlooked. So diverse that it can seem to defy classification, it has no shared voice or body of knowledge. Nevertheless, this report suggests it requires closer scrutiny.
Casual food tends to be cheap, is often highly processed, and generates a lot of food and packaging waste. Although it is hugely popular, it is criticised for being unhealthy, and information about where it comes from or what it contains is rarely available when you buy it. Work in the sector is poorly paid, precarious, and sometimes illegal. The whole food system is under widespread pressure to become more sustainable.
Broadly speaking, the challenge is to produce more and better quality food, more ethically, from less land, using fewer resources, and with fewer negative impacts, and to share it more equitably. Efforts to make the food system more sustainable will have to take the social, environmental, and economic impacts of our casual eating habit into account. This report is based on a series of interviews with the owners of small independent takeaways and cafés.
Its ‘Ten thoughts to take away’ are:
- We spend more than £10 billion each year on sandwiches, chips, burgers, kebabs, curries, noodles and the like, a lot of it from small, independent high-street outlets.
- It’s a huge slice of the national food cake. And it’s growing. This kind of foraging is no longer marginal or exceptional –it is normal, everyday activity.
- It is not what it seems. For customers it seems to be quick, convenient, tasty, handy, fresh, varied, and affordable. Often, it is unhealthy, wasteful, socially exploitative, environmentally damaging, global, and
- Much of it is clone food. Wholesalers provide small, local outlets with heavily processed, globally sourced, and mass-produced supplies.
- There are big hidden costs. It is cheap to purchase, but at a high price for customers’ health, for workers, and for the environment.
- Not many of us know or care about this. Because it is still seen as a marginal form of catering, few people – least of all customers – mind about the downsides or take responsibility for them.
- The sector is struggling to survive in the face of fierce competition from the fast food giants. To keep food cheap, costs and wages are driven down to a minimum, right through the supply chain.
- Local cafés and takeaways would go out of business if they were obliged to serve food that was healthy, fair, and green. Many thousands of small enterprises would be forced to close. Many thousands of individuals and families, already on the edge of economic survival, would lose their livelihoods.
- Markets trump the interests of people and the planet. To develop a food system that is socially just and environmentally sustainable, we must first tackle the unsustainable market economics that underpin it.
- In policy terms the sector is nearly invisible – taken for granted, yet under the radar of official appraisal and public debate. We need a new policy debate about how to support independent, local cafes and takeaways to supply affordable food that is sustainable in social, environmental and economic terms.
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