Where most sustainability conversations start
When we talk about sustainable sourcing, the focus is usually on what we buy.
Local vs imported.
Plant-based vs animal.
Seasonal vs out-of-season.
But there's another factor quietly shaping the footprint of foodservice operations, and it's rarely part of the conversation:
How food gets to the kitchen.
Not just how far it travels, but how often it arrives, how it's transported, and how fragmented the supply chain is along the way.
Sustainability doesn’t stop at the supplier
For most food products, the biggest environmental impact happens at the production stage - farming, fishing or manufacturing.
But once food enters the foodservice supply chain, distribution starts to play a meaningful role in shaping its overall footprint.
In practice, this includes:
Multiple weekly deliveries
Small, frequent orders
Separate chilled and frozen drops
Products arriving from numerous specialist suppliers
All of these are operationally normal, traditionally associated with maintaining quality, flexibility and waste reduction.
But collectively, they can increase:
Delivery miles
Vehicle movements
Cold chain reliance
Packaging
Handling
Which means two kitchens sourcing the same ingredients could end up with very different environmental impacts depending on how those ingredients are delivered.
The trade-off we don’t talk about
Modern foodservice has evolved around responsiveness.
Ordering little and often reduces spoilage.
Working with specialists improves quality.
Frequent deliveries support consistency.
All valid priorities - and ones that don't need to be compromised. But the way these priorities are delivered can also increase logistics complexity, and with it, emissions.
Sustainability, in this context, isn't just shaped by sourcing decisions, but by how those priorities are operationalised.
The “local” paradox
It's easy to assume that sourcing locally always lowers impact. But as we explored in our piece on why local isn't always sustainable, proximity alone doesn't determine sustainability - just as how food is produced matters, how it reaches the kitchen does too.
If locally sourced ingredients arrive through multiple small, frequent deliveries, the environmental advantage can be diminished compared to more efficient distribution approaches.
This doesn't mean local sourcing is the wrong choice.
It simply highlights an important reality:
Efficiency matters alongside proximity.
More than just a sourcing decision
How often food moves
The takeaway isn't that kitchens need to compromise on quality or flexibility.
But it does suggest that sustainability isn't just a procurement decision - it's also an operational one.
Delivery frequency, ordering habits and supply fragmentation are all part of the footprint equation, even if they're rarely framed that way.
In response, some kitchens are starting to look more closely at how fragmented their supply chains really need to be, exploring ways to streamline deliveries without sacrificing flexibility, choice or increasing operational burden.
At Collectiv Food, this is exactly the space we operate in - consolidating orders at our PODs and warehouse and delivering them together in a single drop. This reduces delivery frequency for operators, simplifies supplier management, and can unlock both operational efficiencies and cost savings.
How food moves
The number of deliveries is only part of the story. How those deliveries are made matters too.
This is why the electrification of last-mile delivery is such a key focus for us. Our Operations team is continually exploring ways to expand our low-emission fleet, from electric quad bikes and vans to, more recently, an electric truck. Each addition is designed to reduce emissions where it matters most: in the final miles, right at the heart of our city.
Watch this space for more updates.
Looking beyond ingredients
As sustainability conversations mature across the industry, the focus is expanding beyond ingredients alone.
Understanding impact now means looking at systems, not just products.
Because sometimes the biggest difference isn't between local and imported, or plant-based and animal, but in how efficiently the same food moves through the supply chain.
