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'Sustainable' Food is a crucial - and often overlooked element, in the process of living within our environmental means. Food is vital to everybody's life, sustainable food is vital to the life of the earth. We need to be able to produce food a more sustainable way - to do this we need to take into consideration 3 important factors all of which have an impact:
The environment:
How the food is grown and made: Use less resources - energy in growing, transporting etc; pollute less (herbicides, pesticides)
Social Implications:
Working conditions, training, social welfare of workers in food chain
Economic:
Subsidies, excess profiteering from customers and/or from the state

Cote How's Sustainable Food Policy

In order to offer sustainable food we have considered many options, and have made our decisions based on the following:

ORGANIC FOOD
We are now 100% organic and Soil Association licenced
Organic food production has been proven to use 30% less energy in it's production than non organic food.

Environment - It uses no herbicides or pesticides making it friendly to flora and fauna, therefore creating much better bio diversity and balanced nature.
It is better for us as we eat healthier. It prevents the leakage of nasty chemicals into our waterways.

Local Sourcing - We make choices every week as to which fresh fruit and vegetables to buy, based on an updated list from Howbarrow Organic Farm which changes weekly and lists the origins of every item available.
We will always choose the closest to home for produce, keeping the food miles to a minimum and to support our local farmers and growers. It also keeps our food Cumbrian and we reflect this in our menu.

Sustainable Communities - With natural farming more labour is required to keep abreast of weeds etc, therefore money once spent on herbicides and pesticides is now spent on employing more workers. This in turn regenerates regions as workers are brought into communities to help on the farms. This in turn brings in families who fill the schools and support other local trades.

Seasonal - By choosing food which is in season we are also cutting down on the energy used to grow these foods. For example we can not expect to get local tomatoes in the Winter time therefore we will remove them from the menu.
Tomatoes that are forced to grow "out of season" use energy to light and heat them. Precious resources which are adding to the Greenhouses gases.

FAIRTRADE - We only buy Fair Trade teas, coffees, hot chocolate, jam, sugar etc. Most of these items come from one supplier in Staveley. We like to support this supplier as they have made ethical choices to only deal in Fair Trade produce, and have therefore dedicated their business to this. See Our Suppliers

Think about where your food comes from before you are tempted to buy it.