We believe in plant-based

At Espresso House we are aware that our greatest environmental impact trickles down to the products that we serve. Therefore, this is an area where we continuously need to innovate and renew and where our focus has been towards plant-based options. According to the UN Climate Change report ‘a shift toward plant-based diets is one of the most significant ways to reduce greenhouse gases from the agriculture sector’. We believe in this too, and in fact, already in 2017 we started expanding our plant-based and vegetarian options on food and drinks, a work that has been ongoing ever since. We have set a goal that strives for 50% plant-based food and drinks in our assortments, and in the end of 2020 we had reached an average of 46% for all countries.

During 2020 many new plant-based products were trialed and developed. Our own Bakery delivered a range of five vegan products including three Cookies and a Caramel Pecan brownie that became a best-seller amongst these products. During Christmas campaign, we also launched a vegan saffron cookie. We saw new vegan Frapinos, bowls and new vegan products in our grab ‘n’ go box on the counter. In Germany we also launched a new delicious vegan avocado bread roll, and in Denmark a new vegan focaccia. Finland offers a vegan raw cake from a local Finnish bakery.

The demand for plant-based amongst our guests have been increasing steadily throughout the past years and this can for example be observed in the use of plant-based milk for hot and cold drinks across all countries. In 2020, approximately 12% of all hot drinks were sold with plant-based milk, compared to 8,2% in 2019. The plant-based alternatives to cow’s milk includes oat, soy, pea and coconut milk with some variations between the countries. Oat is our most popular plant-based option.

Our own bakery

At Espresso House we are proud to serve baked bread and pastry from our very own Espresso House Bakery. Located in Arlöv outside Malmö in Sweden, the bakery is run by a devoted and professional team of baking masters who are working everyday to develop and bake various delicious products of highest quality for our coffee shops. With its 7200 square meters and 45 employees, the bakery produced 1980 tons of products in 2020 including 345 000 delicious vegan cookies and 239 000 vegan brownies which was the first ever plant-based produce of the Bakery.

In the continuous work towards maintaining and improving our food quality and safety, the bakery was in November 2020 again certified for quality and food-safety, with the grade AA according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Food Safety Standard. We have also continued our work in ensuring  responsible sourcing of raw ingredients such as cocoa. The bakery became in March 2020 members of UTZ (www.utz.org) and we are now using good insight portal to register all of our purchases of cocoa for traceability. 73% of all cocoa powder purchased in 2020 was UTZ certified.

Supplier Code of Conduct

At Espresso House we want to create strong, healthy and transparent supplier relationships. Since 2017, we ask all our suppliers to sign our Code of Conduct. The purpose of the Code of Conduct is to ensure that Espresso House Group’s suppliers abide to our standards and work in accordance with internationally recognized minimum standards for human rights, labor law, the environment and anti-corruption. The code of conduct is a mandatory document that must be used by all countries and companies under Espresso House Group.

The supply chain division has the overall responsibility for the suppliers’ compliance at Espresso House Group and we follow up on a regular basis. By December 2020, a total of 97% of all product suppliers had signed our Code of Conduct, which is a minor increase from 2019. Our ambition and goal is always that 100% of all our existing and new suppliers shall have accepted and signed the Code of Conduct. In 2020 we improved our supplier screening by also introducing and mapping certain sustainability aspects of potential new suppliers in the initial questionnaire before signing an agreement. The work to improve the supplier screening and follow up will continue in 2021.

Anti-corruption 

We are a company that our guests, employees and suppliers can rely on and it’s important that all parts of our operations are handled transparently and in accordance with existing laws and regulations. In 2018, we formulated an Anti-Corruption Policy for Espresso House Group, and in October 2019 we furthermore introduced a whistleblower function in Espresso House Sweden that enables malpractice, unlawful or unethical behavior to be reported anonymously by our employees. In the beginning of 2021 the whistleblower was implemented in four markets. The Finance department has the ultimate ownership of the anti-corruption policy and the implementation of it. In 2020, zero incidents were reported in terms of issues related to corruption.