Landmark Issue 19 2021 SINGLE PAGES

Covid-19: A catalyst for greater food provenance It seems strange to reflect back to January 2020 when I spoke at the Foodservice Packaging Association conference in London about the change in single-use packaging legislation and the risk of viral contamination of uncovered food, reusable containers or food surfaces. The virus I was talking about then was norovirus. At that time Coronavirus-2019, now shortened to Covid-19, was only beginning to gain international attention. Fast forward to now and the physical and social restrictions that have been implemented to address the continued rampage of Covid-19 across the world have caused us to pause and reflect on our food systems and the way we as both citizens, and as consumers interact with them. The reflection on our profligate use of plastic, food waste, climate change, shocks, vulnerabilities, risk and resilience is profound. Food service suggested then to be 30 % of food supply, disappeared overnight. Initially, physical retail food stores struggled to fill the void. For many organisations supplying food service, their market was temporarily or is permanently lost. This brittleness across our food supply required business survival tactics to be deployed. One aspect of business survival is agility. Many food supply businesses have had to pivot their business model to survive. Time was/is of the essence. We see fantastic examples of businesses, large and small, forging new paths. Many of them focused on “direct to customer” or DTC for short. DTC is not new. Box schemes, on-farm vending and online shops for collection or direct supply have been around for a while, but the sea change in the last six months is incredible. DTC is not only about local food, it is about so much more and the sustainable value proposition created for customers. These are difficult, tragic times, but Covid-19 has proved a catalyst for business opportunities too. Professor LouiseManning Director of Knowledge Exchange 22 LANDMARK INDUSTRY & LEADERSHIP