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Vasaris is an innovative restaurant and food service provider in Lithuania. Specialising in quality restuarant food services, the company also provides events and conference catering services abd take away food.
Learn how the business is putting sustainability at the heart of its servcies and supporting its customers reduce waste.
“In the current period, when managers still take a lot of responsibility, and the term “competition” still dominates, when companies takes part in greenwashing, we understand that integrity has yet to get through and attitude change strongly,” says Miglė Gruzdenė („Vasaris“ restaurant ).
Miglė Gruzdenė, the manager of the conference center and restaurant “Vasaris” in Panevėžys (Lithuania), shared with us a journey of business development based on the principles of sustainability, where her colleagues and customers also play an important role.
Miglė Gruzdenė is an active member of the city’s business community, involved in the mentoring program for young business developers, an energetic organizator of activities that gather the whole community and promote environmental protection. This inspired us to present her experiences and insights as the story of a good business example, which we hope will spark an action you too.
“Food waste management in this company is part of an integral approach – we value it as just one of the important processes that help the company to implement continuous improvements in the field of sustainability” – states the head of the company. The company is not exactly a newcomer to business, and was one of the first in the city to introduce sustainability ideas to its customers. The company’s activities cover 2 different economic sectors in which food is produced – a restaurant and a shopping center operating in the same building, where fresh, short-shelf live confectionery and culinary products are also continuously produced and served. This is a big challenge for which, to get over, the company first of all carefully follows the flow of customers and accordingly plans the amount of their production.
“We see that customers value the opportunity to cooperate in the sustainability processes we carry out – consult on portion sizes in a restaurant or when purchasing confectionery and culinary products and take them home themselves or in our environmentally friendly containers” – says the company’s manager – “This is how we gather a community of customers who care about the environment and food conservation”.
Looking for opportunities to increase the sustainability of operations, the company not only uses existing good practices in this field, but also seeks to apply innovative solutions – use the excess heat generated in the food production process and save energy resources.
Employee training is also an integral part of the company’s activities. Experience gained in various seminars and trainings is shared by the manager with the company’s employees, inspiring them with sustainability ideas as well. The team continues to improve the adopted ideas and turn them into a part of the company’s operational process.
“Such challenges of food waste management that we have overcome are also actual by the customers of our restaurant and shopping center. For this, we organize educational programs, during which we introduce “why and what” solutions we have implemented, and how our customers can generally manage food waste during our events or at home” – shares Miglė Gruzdenė.