Sustainability Edit - Perky Blenders
Our next cafe in our new Sustainability Edit in collaboration with KeepCup is Perky Blenders. We speak to Emily Herriott about the ways in which they're promoting sustainability.
Please tell us a little bit about your café
Perky Blenders first started on 3 wheels, using a tuk tuk coffee cart back in 2015. Since then, we’ve opened 4 cafes and 2 roasteries the UK. We’re a coffee company focused on family and sustainability, who like to make fancy coffee a little less snobby and a little more approachable - sharing is caring after all.
How do you support sustainability in your coffee shop?
Perky Blenders uses only high quality, and locally sourced food and dairy suppliers. All coffee bags are biodegradable and delivered via bicycle from our roastery to cafes. Customers receive 40p off each drink order when they’ve brought in their own reusable cup, and you can even bring in your own container to fill with beans to save on packaging – with the reward of a free coffee for the eco effort. All single-use cups and lids provided are recyclable (which we’ve found to be more effective than compostable) and our coffee grounds are sent to an allotment in Walthamstow.
How have customers responded to your sustainability efforts?
Extremely well. Any announcements we make regarding our efforts towards sustainability and the environment have the highest engagement rates amongst all our content. We work closely with our friends at KeepCup (who happen to be just down the road) who support our efforts to help make our cafes single-use-free in the future. We hope that new customers love our coffee - but also like to know that our packaging and our business are doing our bit for the planet.
What advice do you have for coffee shops trying to implement sustainability initiatives?
Do your research. Technology and behaviours are constantly changing and unfortunately, not all of what you read is true or very clear! Look up what the waste management is like locally, and how they can support you and your business. Also, educate your customers. It’s no good them not knowing how best to handle a product at the end of its life, and then it ending up in landfill despite all your efforts.
How do you tackle the use of single-use cups being used?
We reward our customers by offering 40p off when they bring in their own cup, and we hope that one day (soon) all of our sites will accept re-usables only. We’ve decided to provide recyclable cups and lids until then, as a higher percentage of them are recycled compared to (the current trend of) compostables that unfortunately end up in landfill.