Like for Like, Totally - A hospitality KPI

We’ve been using Zedible in our own hospitality business Double Puc for a while now, in fact, we have data going back to Oct 2021 which has all been mapped to our actual purchasing volumes, because remember most of the carbon is on the plate, in the cup, in the pie etc. So now with more than 12m of data we can finally start looking at carbon using the old industry favourite metric that is…“Like for Like”. For those outside of the sector, ‘like for likes’ are the performance comparison of this period's trading Vs the same period usually last year.

The sector reports these on a near daily basis, especially as it recovers from the lastest shock to rock the good ship hospitality Brexit  Covid  Energy  Recession  Inflation / Insert latest news story here).

If carbon is going to get the attention that it requires, and that many operators are suggesting, then CO2 simply must become a KPI on a monthly basis and interrogated in the same way as costs, sales and other key metrics. Embedding carbon into the C Suite is going to be key for any  business that wants to navigate towards a lower carbon future, net zero or otherwise. 

Unlike our days at Friska with VC backing and monthly board reports to create / review and action, things are a little less formal at Double Puc, however we still review our sales, labour, cost of sale and now CO2 metrics on a monthly basis. With the insight that Zedible has given, we have started to switch out ingredients that have driven down our carbon intensity figures despite sales increasing (Win / Win). In other words we are more carbon efficient per £ of revenue we make. 

Our seasonally adjusted benchmark of Co2 was 102g / £1 (Net of Vat) for the period Oct ‘21 - Sept ‘22. Looking at the first 5m of our new trading year (Oct’22-Feb’23), our ‘like for like CO2 Intensity’ is running at 92g of Co2 / £. That’s a whopping 9.8% decrease without any impact on cost or customer experience! This means that in the context of sales growth we have averted just over 7.9 tons from the atmosphere, or approximately 48,000km driven in a family car (Land’s End to John o' Groats just over 57 times!).

Now our little cafe chain is tiny….but just imagine the impact of Mcdonalds/Pret/Waga. which operate at scale taking this approach, the results could be seriously impressive, totally awesome…a most excellent adventure.