SUSTAINABLE SHOPPING

Focus on local suppliers and Czech food

As early as May of 2015, we were involved, as the first university, in a project of Anete, supported by the Ministry of Agriculture called f-regions®. The aim of the f-regions® project was to open the mass catering market to regional producers (especially primary producers and primary growers) and their products. The project was not-for-profit and provided participants with organizational, marketing, and technical support to achieve the goal of the project - to offer end-eaters meals cooked from best food from their region. But this project had a lot of challenges. The biggest problem was arranging the logistics of delivering goods in the necessary quantity and short time from the primary producers to the storerooms of our canteens. For the most part, small regional producers are not able to transport their goods to the kitchen according to the customer's needs. Eventually, big food distributors, such as Bidfood, Bikos, Exver, etc., got involved and started buying food from regional producers and distributing it to end customers. Most of the food that pass through our storerooms today come from the Czech Republic.

Sustainable public procurement considering locality, seasonality and other environmental aspects should be given priority over exclusive pricing. Preference for the environmental aspect of choosing a supplier may mean a higher purchase price for the food, but it turns out that focusing on local suppliers is also economically preferable in some cases.

Our permanent suppliers include, for example: Jatka Ivančice, s. r. o., Kroutil, s. r. o., Mlékárna Olešnice, a. s., BSHB,s. r. o., Exrudo Bečice, s. r. o. and lots of others. Due to the size of the SKM operation, we are using larger suppliers such as MACRO and the like, who are involved in the sustainability project (www.makro.cz/udrzitelnost)