This article was originally written for and published by Foodservice Consultant, FCSI’s (Foodservice Consultants Society International) trade magazine, for which Marius writes a monthly column.
Hey Young World,
As I’m writing this, I’m still recovering from what was a long, hot European summer, during which it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the extent to which extreme weather is beginning to affect everyday life. Across Europe, heatwaves, drought and wildfires have damaged agricultural production, disrupted transport and put pressure on water and energy supplies. For hospitality, however, some of the consequences may be less visible. You might not see a wildfire from your restaurant, but you may eventually see it on your menu.
Food supply chains have always been vulnerable to disruption, of course. What is changing is the frequency and scale of the disruptions. Extreme weather affects crops, livestock and the infrastructure needed to move food from one place to another, with the consequences eventually reaching restaurants through shortages, price increases and changes in quality or availability. This summer alone, European farmers have reported significant harvest losses, while low water levels have also disrupted transport on major rivers.
For restaurants, this creates a particular problem. Hospitality is an industry built around certainty. It promises a table at a particular time, a particular dish, prepared in a particular way, and customers expect the same coffee, the same tomato, the same potato, the same steak. Yet the systems underneath those promises are becoming less predictable.
For decades, much of the food industry has moved towards efficiency. Global sourcing, large-scale production, just-in-time deliveries and increasingly streamlined supply chains have allowed restaurants to offer more choice at lower prices. It is a model that works remarkably well when everything works. The problem is that efficiency and resilience are not always the same thing. The model becomes remarkably fragile when one of its parts is affected by drought, flooding, fire or another extreme event. Weather shocks are increasingly propagating through the food supply chain, affecting not only production but also prices, logistics and availability.
Diversifying the supply chain
The obvious response is to become more resilient. A restaurant could diversify its suppliers, work with more local producers, carry more stock or design menus around ingredients that can be substituted when necessary. All of these things can make a business less vulnerable, but all of them also add complexity and cost. For an industry already struggling with rising labor, energy and food costs, that is not an insignificant problem.
There is, however, an opportunity hidden in this necessity. Perhaps resilience can also mean becoming less rigid. A restaurant does not have to abandon its identity simply because an ingredient is unavailable. A menu can change with the seasons, with the harvest and, increasingly, with the weather. Consistency does not necessarily have to mean identicality.
This could even bring hospitality closer to something it has historically done well: adapting to its surroundings. A restaurant that knows its local producers, understands what is available and can change accordingly may ultimately be more resilient than one built around an inflexible menu designed to look exactly the same throughout the year.
There is also a broader question about who should bear the cost of this resilience. Farmers need investment in water management, soil health and climate-resilient crops. Suppliers need more robust logistics. Restaurants need more flexible procurement. Consumers, ultimately, may have to accept that resilience has a price. There are already signs of food companies, insurers and financial institutions becoming more involved in climate-resilient agriculture because supply security is increasingly becoming a business concern rather than simply an environmental one.
Perhaps, then, the question for hospitality is no longer only how to make its supply chains more sustainable, but how to make them capable of surviving what is coming.
One Love,
Marius