Community

apetito is acutely aware that, as a business, it does not operate in isolation. Everyone who works at apetito is part of their personal family unit and part of their wider community, through organisations such as schools, faith groups or sports clubs.

Vicki Sopp, who works at Portbury as a Customer Service Adviser, is secretary of the Staff Foundation, set up by apetito to support charitable and voluntary work of our staff and their children.

In 2007, our contribution to the community was recognised by the Food and Drink Federation with a Community Partnership Award.

We have given money to sports teams, riding for the disabled, play groups and sea cadets. A particularly heart-rending request was to help to pay for a specially-adapted computer for a young disabled girl. We were very pleased to be able to do something for her.

Over the past two years we have donated £34,000 to many good causes. We get letters of thanks and photographs, which we then publish in the staff magazine.

I also sit on a panel with Bristol City Council meeting the end users, the elderly people who eat our meals-on-wheels, to listen to their views. Providing this feedback to the company is an important part of apetito.

We like to be involved with working with children and young people, and at apetito we run our annual Schools' Masterchef Competition. The competition gives GCSE food technology students who may be thinking of working in the industry an insight into the many diverse issues facing a business such as this.

We have recently begun a partnership with FareShare in Bristol, a charity that distributes surplus and short-dated food to the needy and homeless. We passionately believe that this demonstrates apetito's real sustainability agenda in the community. This results in a win-win all round as it saves apetito disposal costs, avoids food waste and landfilling and supports the poor and needy.

Sustainability to me means keeping going. If we can support people who work here when they are in their communities, thenwe are helping them to do a better job for the company.

Vicki Sopp
Customer Service Advisor

The training and development of our staff contributes to all three pillars of sustainability:

- Socially, it enables our people to protect themselves, for example through health and safety training, and to better their future prospects through recognised and accredited training courses.
- Economically, well trained staff are going to be more of an asset to the business than untrained or poorly trained staff.
- Environmentally we use training to encourage our people to be aware of the challenges facing us.

Keeping on top of our statutory training is an integral part of our sustainability as a business. Without it we would get nowhere. However, apetito is always keen to do more than the legal minimum. Most people in the factory have regular Environmental Management Safety briefings covering subjects such as turning off lights and taps, being energy conscious and using the correct waste streams. Many have achieved NVQ Level 2 in food hygiene and safety and now we are looking at opportunities for them to work towards level 3. Recently we have identified which key people have an impact on the environment, for example through their management of waste, water or vehicles, and we are ensuring that they receive specific and tailored environmental awareness training. My role is to support the members of team apetito in the jobs that they are doing, working alongside them from the start, so that when they spot an opportunity we can identify their training needs. I'm out there in the business, helping people to achieve and helping the company to achieve it's goal of being a sustainable organisation.

Zoë Witheridge
Learning & Development Manager