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Last month we hosted our first annual meeting for Britain Yearly Meeting, Quakers in Britain since the pandemic at Friends House London. It was great to have many of the Quaker community back under one roof for the annual gathering of Friends over a four-day weekend of insights and stillness.

“For many of the team and myself this was our first Yearly Meeting and it all went extremely well with us serving over 2500 meals over the weekend”.

Eamonn Cole – Head of Operations

Over the yearly meeting weekend, our team at Friends House in collaboration with Hubbub Catering London created and delivered extensive vegan/vegetarian menus focusing on plant-based menus which is in line with our commitment to reduce meat and fish within our food offers. This year’s theme regarding the menu was ‘Tastes of the World’ embarking on delicious meals and embracing cuisines from various cultures.

The menu touched on foods from Italy, India and Morocco. We served delicious vegetarian and vegan dishes including spicy chickpea stew with coriander; roasted vegetable tikka and mushroom; mozzarella & basil lasagne. We have had lots of lovely feedback from Friends about how much they enjoyed the plant-based food delivered at this year’s meeting.   

There are many challenges that come with catering for a large number of people. Taking an operational review of catering for large events the biggest challenge is food wastage, which for the Quiet Company is a key area. However, due to this being our first yearly meeting since the pandemic the actual attendance numbers did not match the initial number of people that RSVP’d. This resulted in us over-catering on our hot food stalls. With sustainability being an integral factor in how the Quiet Company operates, finding solutions to combat food wastage going forward is key in reducing the impact on the world as we know. Every single gram of food that’s binned produces CO2 from both production and waste.

“On average 18 % of food purchased by the UK hospitality and food sector is being thrown away – and for every gram that ends up in the bin, there is an environmental cost. As a company, we have made a commitment to reduce food wastage and have started working on ways to reduce our food waste by looking at looking both post food production and post customer waste streams.”

Paul Grey – CEO of Quiet Company

In 2021 we recorded a 77% recycling rate and were awarded a Silver Recycling Standard Award by First Mile for achieving that figure. Quiet Company continues to implement measures to reduce our waste levels.