A Sustainable Future
Patisserie Valerie has been proudly crafting lovingly handmade cakes and gateaux since 1926. As we approach our centenary and look to the future, we've implemented a range of sustainable baking practices and are delighted to have achieved carbon neutral status. Sustainability is now at the heart of our commitment to providing luxury baked products that our customers can feel good about enjoying. We’re happy to share some of our sustainable baking practices here.
Fresh, local Ingredients
We handmake all our cakes here in the UK so we have complete control over what goes into our cakes. Where possible, we source our ingredients from UK based suppliers ensuring quality and reducing food miles. In response to customer demand, we have developed plant based cakes with reduced environmental impact. Where we can't source locally (e.g. our specialty coffee), we try to source sustainably, from farms or producers with ethical credentials and supply chain traceability.
Carbon Neutral Deliveries
We conveniently deliver cakes to people's homes and workplaces all over the UK directly from our central bakery. This reduces ingredient wastage and ensures customers can get the personalised cake they
want whenever and wherever they are. We work with the best logistics providers in the business to ensure reliable, efficient deliveries, utilising electric and hybrid vehicles and carbon offsetting to ensure each delivery is carbon neutral.
Energy Reduction
All of our cakes are lovingly handmade by our teams of bakers and pastry chefs, which means we don't have a large energy consumption from big machines or factory lines. The electricity we use is from 100% renewable sources, and we are continually looking at small ways to reduce the amount we consume.
Food Waste Reduction
We operate a centralised craft bakery to minimise wastage while maximising efficiency and freshness. All our cakes are freshly baked and flash frozen before dispatch to ensure they arrive in perfect condition. Any excess bakery ingredient waste is collected by a local anaerobic digestion business and turned into green energy. As our food dishes are freshly prepared to order in store, and our fresh fruit tarts and cakes are freshly handmade instore, there is minimal food waste at our patisseries.
Recycled Packaging
Our packaging is made from either recycled or recyclable materials, and we have a reward programme for customers that bring their own cups (or better still one of our reusable ones!) to our patisseries. This is an area where we have ongoing projects to deliver further benefits, but we are conscious that one of the best ways to reduce waste and delight our customers is to ensure our products arrive in perfect condition every time.
Investment in People
All our chocolate cakes are hand baked, and all our birthday cakes are hand decorated by our team of long-serving, superbly qualified bakers and pastry chefs. Our colleagues receive hundreds of hours of
training and practice before they can make our lovingly handmade cakes. The most sustainable thing we do is to keep investing in and training bakers and pastry chefs to ensure the generations to come can continue to enjoy our famous cakes for another 100 years.
We are Carbon Neutral!
We have worked with an independent climate consultancy to measure the impact of all the above changes on our carbon footprint. We then contribute towards a number of carbon reduction projects in developing countries to offset the residual carbon, meaning that we have been certified carbon neutral as a bakery. The next challenge for us is to reduce the rest of the carbon consumption so we can progress towards Zero Carbon status in the future.