We think carefully when it comes to choosing our suppliers. After all, a sustainable caterer starts with good sourcing. Fill a menu with seasonal and locally sourced ingredients, and voilà! The meals will taste better with quality ingredients, plus they’ll have a reduced negative environmental impact across the food chain.

What better example of our chef’s efforts to seek the best for our menus than Hodmedod’s? Cool name, right? And there’s so much to love about what they do, including:

So who are Hodmedod’s? 

They’re food retailers that source pulses, grains, and more from British farms. Hodmedod’s are especially exciting for supplying less-well-known foods, like the fava bean that has been growing in the UK since the Iron Age. We recommend you check out the cutest story behind their company’s name.

Here’s why we love using their produce:

Hodmedod’s helps us buy local for all our quinoa and various pulses. They are dedicated to only sourcing their produce from UK farmers primarily based in the counties surrounding London. It’s simple: fewer food miles from the farms to our kitchen means fewer carbon emissions generated by the food. Plus, buying from Hodmedod’s allows us to support responsible farmers within the UK.

But what's so special about pulses?

Pulses are special. The UN has even dedicated a whole day to this marvelous ingredient. World Pulses Day falls on the 10th February, but what makes pulses worth celebrating? First of all, they’re packed with nutrients and a wonderful addition to any diet. Secondly, they help food security for farmers in their homes, who can both grow and consume them more easily than other produce.

There’s also a host of environmental benefits to growing pulses, including the improvement to soil fertility and reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers – therefore mitigating climate change. The UN website is jam-packed full of information about the importance of pulses, if you’d like to learn more.

So, what do we cook with their produce?

The quinoa by Hodmedod’s takes pride of place as an ingredient in many of our meals: from our quinoa, peanut, avocado and roasted butternut squash salad to our lemon and sage chicken with quinoa, blackened corn and jalapeno salsa. We also used spelt by Hodmedod’s with one of our One Planet Plate dishes for our summer menu: Our British pearled spelt, Canterbury goats cheese with Nutbourne tomatoes.

A ‘One Planet Plate’ is where all the requirements to be a sustainable dish set by the Sustainable Restaurant Association are met.  You’ll often find Hodmedod’s ingredients in our bakery, salads, main dishes, and our ‘Fuel’ packed lunch range. So next time you enjoy a meal by Fooditude, you can be assured it’s made with only the good stuff.

World Pulses Day 2023

The Chefs at Fooditude whipped up a special menu centered around pulses on Friday 10th February 2023. Here we used plenty of delicious produce from Hodemedod’s to create dishes such as:

• Chickpea roast squash patties, lemon & shaved radish VE GF
• Lamb & flamingo pea stew GF
• Grilled cod w/ roasted olives, tomato & puffed butter beans GF
• Cannellini bean chop salad VE
• Fava bean salad VE GF

Check out some of the pics from the day:

Taking the next step

By working with suppliers like Hodmedod’s, we can positively impact the global food supply.  Footidude cooks over 2,000 meals a day in our London kitchen. At that scale, even the slightest improvement in the ingredients greatly influences our carbon footprint over time. 

By making the extra effort to buy right when sourcing our ingredients, we keep on track to become a more sustainable caterer. If you’d like to see what else we’re doing to take action for people and the planet, our Sustainability Policy 2022 has everything you need to know.