Food Savvy Impact Report YEAR TWO
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Introducing Food Savvy
Our Purpose
#FoodSavvy is a collaborative food waste reduction campaign led by Norfolk County Council, Suffolk Waste Partnership and environmental charity, Hubbub. In 2018 we partnered around a vision to achieve a 20% reduction in food waste in Suffolk and Norfolk. This target is aligned with the government supported Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP)’s Courtauld Commitment which in turn is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Our approach is guided by local insight, behaviour change theory and international best practice. This report logs the journey of the second year of the initiative. Here we share our informed approach, our progress, our learning and our vision for the year ahead. We know that food waste is a stubborn issue but one that we all must address if we are to make serious headway against the Sustainable Development Goals. You can find out more about Food Savvy, our guiding vision and the results of year one on the Food Savvy website.
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Contents Introduction
1
Executive Summary
2
Our Vision and Approach
5
Year Two Context
9
Impact Year Two
14
Campaign Activity Year Two
19
Digital Communications
28
Key Learnings
40
Year Three
43
Get Involved
45
Conclusion
46
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Introduction The UK is facing a food waste challenge. It is estimated that 7.1m tonnes of food waste was binned by households in 2015 – over 60% of which was avoidable. In Norfolk and Suffolk, this equates to 118,000 tonnes of wasted food across the two counties annually. In response, Norfolk and Suffolk Councils and environmental charity, Hubbub, launched the Food Savvy partnership in 2018. We set out a shared vision to achieve a 20% reduction in food waste in Suffolk and Norfolk by 2025. Our target is aligned with the government supported Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP)’s Courtauld Commitment. By the end of the second year of the campaign, it was our ambition to have helped 43,000 households make a meaningful reduction in food waste, from 3kg per week to 2.7kg. A decrease of 10%. We have come to the end of the second year of the Food Savvy partnership. This report shares our achievements and learning during a year of great change for UK households.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Building on Strong Foundations Year Two of Food Savvy has built on the learning and foundations of Year One:
Developing the Food Savvy brand and messaging, continuing to add content to the FoodSavvy website and create shareable social media assets.
Developing new local partnerships and a network of supporters who are committed to delivering the message.
Honing promising campaigns and interventions from Year One to increase their reach and impact.
Building awareness through communications, to combat food waste and the most commonly wasted foods.
Generating authentic stories from the public and local influencers.
Targeting messaging at high wasting households.
The Best Made Plans 2020 has been a year for change. We began the second year of Food Savvy making headway against the project vision. In March 2020 COVID-19 bought a national lockdown. We adapted our plans. On-the-ground events were put on hold and we dialled up our digital communications to respond to the food experiences of the nation. This response was informed by national polling. Both ‘halves’ of the year are reflected in this report. 2
Executive Summary
A TIME FOR CHANGE
Headline Impact 2019-2020 Actitvities and Reach
Year two of our seven year strategy has made great headway against our ambition during a challenging year:
Six campaigns with 50 collaborations and 20 events. 8,292 local members of the public engaged at events and workshops.
7,115 local visitors to the Food Savvy website. Four and a
half times the number of local visitors to the site in year one. The Food Savvy newsletter acquired a 43% increase in local sign ups from Year One, totalling 453 sign ups. Reach of 1.8 million on Twitter and Instagram with 629 unique contributors.
Press ‘Opportunities to see’: National press: 58.7million, local press 9.1 million. Impact Brand recognition up by 2% compared to 2019.
69% of those signed up to Food Savvy campaigns and
communications say that Food Savvy has helped them to reduce waste. The average by which respondents reduced their food waste was 20.3%.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Cumulative reach over the First Two Years Since its inception in 2018, the Food Savvy collaboration has: Run 15 campaigns, exhibited at 70 events and collaborated with 100 organisations and influencers.
Engaged 21K people at events and workshops. Attracted 8,704 local visitors to the Food Savvy website. Had 358 local individuals sign up to the Food Savvy Challenge and mailing list.
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Our Vision The UK is facing a food waste challenge. It is estimated that 7.1m tonnes of food waste was binned by households in 2015 – over 60% of which was avoidable. In Norfolk and Suffolk, this equates to 118,000 tonnes of wasted food annually across the two counties. During the COVID-19 pandemic, household food wastage of four key items decreased by 34%*. Whether these changes stick long term remains to be seen, but the public’s desire for change is promising. In August 2020 two thirds of 2,002 householders surveyed expressed that they want to do more to reduce food waste.** Supporting these households to reduce food waste in the wake of the pandemic, and longer term, requires leadership and a coordinated response. As the climate crisis escalates and household budgets are further stretched, we cannot ignore the imperative to reduce food waste. Food Savvy’s call for communities and businesses to work together to cut food waste is now louder than ever. Over the last two years, Food Savvy has used local insight and international best practice to work towards our vision of a 20% reduction by 2025. This report shares our achievements and learning during a year of great change for UK households. We are calling on more local organisations to join us in our effort in the year ahead. * April 2020 Wrap research among a sample of 4,197 nationally representative UK adults https://www.wrap.org.uk/content/citizens-and-food-covid-19-lockdown. **Nationally representative polling of 2,002 Britons conducted in Aug 2020 by Censuswide on behalf of Tesco and Hubbub.
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YEAR TWO AMBITIONS
Year One and Two Ambitions Our ambition for the second year of the campaign was to have reached 43,000 local households and helped them to reduce their food waste by 10%, from an average of 3kg per week to an average of 2.7kg per week. We identified four goals to help us to reach this target.
Goal one
Increased resourcing and leadership across Norfolk and Suffolk.
Goal two
A stronger network of advocates promoting food waste messaging.
Goal three
Work with leading organisations in the region to ensure they have skills and capacity to promote behaviour change on food waste.
Goal four
Households make tangible changes to their lives to reduce food waste.
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An Informed Approach Our approach for Year One and Year Two has been two-pronged, we set out to:
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Develop a communications strategy which works at a regional level and can be rolled out across the #FoodSavvy partnership and amplified by project partners. Create a range of campaigns and interventions which focus on defined audiences. These interventions have been closely measured so we can scale successes.
Learning from Year One informed where we would focus our efforts in Year Two: Successes to scale • Collaborations with community amplifiers such as community groups,
employers and online influencers which proved impactful and influential • Exhibits at high footfall events with take home materials and messages • Seasonal campaigns which provide a topical news hook and assets which can be used for years to come • Reusable installations such as Banana Drama provide cost effective and reliable talking points for a range of scenarios Areas for development • Increased message testing with greater targeting of key audiences • Pushing light touch versions of Year One campaigns such as the Food Savvy
Lunch Club and Kitchen Love in Year Two • Increase stakeholder engagement at a local and national level
Year One and Year Two activities were informed by our 2025 Vision which was built upon behaviour change theory and a strong foundation of local research. Further detail on our approach to delivering Year One and Year Two can be found in the #FoodSavvy 2018 Vision and Year One impact report.
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APPROACH
Responsive to Change We began the second year of Food Savvy with a programme of activities based on the learning of year one. The onset of COVID-19 meant that on the ground events and activities within the project schedule were cancelled. Covid-19 changed our project plans, but it has also changed our relationship with food, our budgets and our values. Early in the Covid-19 lockdown, we undertook polling to understand the impact on the pandemic on household food routines. Additional local polling was conducted in October 2020 to further understand the impact of Covid-19 on local households. Key shifts in the lives of the nation which have impacted and informed the campaign strategy follow.
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Year Two Context: A Time For Change
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YEAR TWO AMBITIONS
Hubbub national polling April 2020
The Plate of The Nation
In May 2020 we undertook polling to understand how Covid-19 was impacting our food habits. These results shaped our communications for the latter part of Year Two and will be carried with us into Year Three. We found that
57%
were valuing food more
45%
48%
said they were wasting less food than usual
said they were worried about the cost of food
During the first six weeks of lockdown, Wrap reported a 34% reduction in waste of potatoes, bread, chicken and milk.
Taking a snapshot Households across the UK have gone through unprecedented change in relation to food. For the first time since WW2, the general public saw shortages of staples, and some households have struggled to access the food that they need.
90% said their cooking and eating habits
have changed under lockdown.
*Food habits survey to 2,038 UK respondents, conducted by Censuswide in April 2020. Wrap research among a sample of 4,197 nationally representative UK adults conducted in April 2020.
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AMBITION
Local polling October 2020
Changing Habits
Food waste habits pre and post COVID-19 in Norfolk and Suffolk: In October 2020, we surveyed 2,004 local households to understand how their food habits had changed since COVID-19. From a list of food saving techniques, the biggest shift in behaviour seen by respondents is that they have become more conscious of their portion sizes since COVID-19, with 64% saying they get their portion sizes more accurate now compared 57% pre COVID-19. Since COVID-19 restrictions were introduced, two in five people (41%) say they are throwing away less food. Of those who are throwing away less, the top three reasons for this are:
Planning meals more carefully (58%)
Getting better at using leftovers (45%)
Using the freezer more (51%)
Four in ten (41%) of those who are throwing away less food now than pre COVID-19, say they are now freezing a wider variety of foods and more than a quarter (25%) say they are now eating more foods past their best before date.
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Further Gains Are Needed A smaller proportion took up key food saving behaviours such as writing dates on products that have been opened or frozen, checking/changing the fridge temperature or portion sizing. Similarly, knowledge of how best to store items has not changed as a result of lockdown. There is much to be done to increase uptake of food saving behaviours. *Food habits survey to 2,038 UK respondents, conducted by Censuswide in April 2020. Wrap research among a sample of 4,197 nationally representative UK adults conducted in April 2020.
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Motivating Change Long Term 66% of people are wanting to do
more to reduce food waste
Nationally representative polling of 2,002 Britons conducted in Aug 2020 by Censuswide on behalf of Tesco and Hubbub
However, only 16% of local households think that food waste has a bigger impact on the environment than plastics
89% agree that food waste is an
important issue
Wrap research among a sample of 4,197 nationally representative UK adults conducted in April 2020
Locally representative polling of 2,004 East Anglians conducted in Oct 2020 by Censuswide on behalf of Food Savvy
81% of Britons concerned or very
concerned about climate change. An increase from 2019
Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, quarterly tracker on nation’s attitudes towards energy infrastructure, August 2020
The financial situation of many UK households is deteriorating The IHS Markit UK household finance index Aug 2020
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Motivate and sustain long term change by reinforcing the financial and environmental benefits of reducing food waste.
Impact Year Two
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Headline Impact 2019-2020 Actitvities and Reach
Year two of our seven year strategy has made great headway against our ambition during a challenging year:
Six campaigns with 50 collaborations and 20 events. 8,292 local members of the public engaged at events and workshops.
7,115 local visitors to the Food Savvy website. Four and a
half times the number of local visitors to the site in year one. The Food Savvy newsletter acquired a 43% increase in local sign ups from Year One, totalling 453 sign ups. Reach of 1.8 million on Twitter and Instagram with 629 unique contributors.
Press ‘Opportunities to see’: National press: 58.7million, local press 9.1 million. Impact Brand recognition up by 2% compared to 2019.
69% of those signed up to Food Savvy campaigns and
communications say that Food Savvy has helped them to reduce waste. The average by which respondents reduced their food waste was 20.3%.
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OUTCOMES
Impact We want to make a meaningful difference to the amount of food going to waste in local households. By 2025 our ambition is to have helped 500,000 households (two-thirds of the households in Suffolk and Norfolk) make meaningful reductions in food waste, from 3 Kgs to 2 Kgs weekly. By 2020 it was our ambition to have helped 43,000 households make a moderate reductions, from 3kg per week to 2.7kg. A decrease of 10%.
30K people
have spoken to us at events and workshops or visited the website
To date, we have had meaningful engagement with 30K households in the Food Savvy target region of Norfolk and Suffolk. These people have spoken with us at events, attended workshops or visited our webpages. We have potentially reached many more via social media and media. 69% of 188 survey respondents signed up to our mailing list reported that Food Savvy had helped them to reduce food waste. Respondents reported that Food Savvy helped them to reduce their food waste by 20.3%. The most commonly adopted food saving behaviours are checking cupboards before shopping (34%) and meal planning (41%). (See Figures one and two). Those who had not been able to reduce their waste as a result of the campaign largely attributed it to the following reasons: 1. They already followed the key Food Savvy advice given. 2. They were new to the campaign and had not yet had time to use the resources. 3. They had little waste in the first place. Influencers engaged in the 2020 campaign managed to reduce their food waste by 40% when engaged in a month long trial. (See ‘Bloggers Challenge’, page 29). The average for the Year One cohort was 50%. In Year One 50 employees engaged in a month long food waste reduction campaign managed to reduce their waste by an average of 52%. 16
The average by which survey respondents reduced their food waste was
20.3%
2% increase in
brand awareness from 2019 to 2020
Food Savvy participant survey responses Food Savvy has helped households to check their fridge and cupboards before shopping and plan their meals.
As a result of the campaign, I/members of my household: Answered: 165 Skipped: 23
By how much do you feel you have been able to reduce your food waste? Answered: 127 Skipped: 61
Food Savvy has helped households to reduce food waste by an average of 20.3%. 17
Brand Recognition In 2019 and 2020, we polled 2,004 representative households in Norfolk and Suffolk. Between 2019 and 2020 there was a 2% increase in brand awareness. In Oct 2020, 11% of 2,004 respondents said they had heard of Food Savvy and 30% said maybe, compared with 9% yes and 30% maybe in 2019. Taking this survey as a representative sample of the population across Suffolk and Norfolk, the campaign will have reached 183,600 people to date. Sources of awareness: Local media awareness has increased – in 2020 28% said that they had seen Food Savvy on local TV, 18% local radio, 18% local papers vs 2019 22%, 15% and 20% respectively
Of those who said they had heard of FoodSavvy, social media remained the most common source (46% in 2020, 40% in 2019)
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C A M PA I G N O V E RV I E W
Campaign Activity Year Two
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2019-20 Digital Activations Our community events and campaigns build on our core digital communications, including:
Food Savvy website
www.foodsavvy.org.uk
Packed with practical tips, recipes and videos for cutting waste while eating well
The Food Savvy Quiz
Identifies ways for participants to cut waste based on their responses
Suffolk Waste Partnership
established Food Savvy Twitter and Facebook channels dedicated to Food waste reduction communications. Norfolk County Council maintained and built followers too.
The Food Savvy Challenge
A year-round social media campaign Coordinated Food Savvy messaging shared from Hubbub, Suffolk Waste Partnership and Norfolk County Council platforms
A month-long emailbased challenge offering tailored support to help households cut waste
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C A M PA I G N O V E RV I E W
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2019 Campaigns & Events September
Aldeburgh Food Festival
October
Pumpkin Rescue
Food waste saving demonstrations in collaboration with top local chefs and the East of England Coop. Food Savvy exhibited at 19 more events between September and March.
The Pumpkin Rescue uses pumpkins as a hook to talk about food waste. A flagship event in Norwich provided 3000 attendees with food saving advice. Seven pumpkin farms and community centres gave out recipes and tips for making the most of pumpkin, or hosted workshops. November
Year One results launched
December
Festive Freeze
Results were amplified in a media release with a call to action for more local households and organisations to get involved. The campaign secured coverage in BBC East Anglia, BBC Radio Suffolk, BBC Radio Norfolk, Heart East Anglia, Eastern Daily Press, North Norfolk News, Eastern Daily Press, Norwich Evening News and KL.FM 96.7. Four local organisations were in touch to explore partnerships following the media release.
Installations, games and seasonal recipe cards were displayed in libraries across the region. They focused on the key food waste reducing behaviour of increased freezer use.
Ongoing: Community Fridge Network
A network of 15 community fridges exist in Norfolk and Suffolk. These provide spaces for communities to exchange surplus food. Community Fridges help households to feel part of a wider movement by highlighting that food waste can be tackled by households and businesses within a community. From March - July 2020, many community fridges suspended operations while a number more pivoted their operations and went on to provide emergency food provision. The Community Fridge due to open in Eye, Suffolk, in 2020 has had to put their plans on hold due to ongoing covid restrictions at the library where the fridge is to be housed. The Feed in Norwich, Norfolk, successfully opened a new community fridge at the end of lockdown in August 2020. 22
2020 Campaigns February
Amplifiers
April - August
Food Savvy Lockdown Kitchen
May - June
Delicious Drawings Competition
Local amplifiers took on the challenge to reduce their waste for a month and share with their followings.
Lockdown related food content, including Food Savvy Easter and a series of Facebook lives covering everything from fussy easters to treating your family to restaurant style waste free food for a tenner.
Local children shared images of their food saving heroes. Winning entries were showcased within the press and within East of England Co-op stores.
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Pumpkin Rescue Summary: The Pumpkin Rescue uses pumpkins as a hook to talk about food waste. It was the first Food Savvy campaign to be run in 2018. Impact: As in 2018, a flagship event was held in Norwich which provided 3000 attendees with food saving advice. Seven pumpkin farms and community centres gave out recipes and tips for making the most of pumpkin. The community kitchen in Haverhill, which was opened under the Food Savvy programme in 2018, hosted family friendly workshops on how to cook with pumpkin with 27 people. On the ground events were supported by a digital comms campaign with simple messaging on how to make the most of Halloween pumpkin and food year round. This received a steady level of engagement on social media. Learning: Following feedback from 2018, the Pumpkin Rescue resource pack was simplified and the campaign was delivered in a more resource efficient way. A need for more campaign materials to be hosted on the Food Savvy site was identified and we have acted on this in 2020.
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Festive Freeze
C A M PA I G N O V E RV I E W
C A M PA I G N O V E RV I E W
Festive Freeze Summary: Installations, jigsaw games and seasonal recipe cards were displayed in libraries across the region. They focused on the key food waste reducing behaviour of increased freezer use. The campaign was supported by a seasonal communications campaign with top tips for making your food go further during the festive period. Impact: Seven Norfolk and five Suffolk libraries took part in the Festive Freeze. An average of 200 recipe cards were disseminated per library, a total of 2,400. Based on average visitor numbers per library, at least 20,000 people saw the displays. Festive Freeze had a high engagement on Instagram. There were 89 posts and with 260 comments and 7,240 likes, generating 1,701,745 impressions. 365 tweets resulted in 2,240,116 timeline deliveries on Twitter. Learning: The initiative helped us to reach large numbers of our target audience with little management needed.The games and installation attracted the attention of children but drew parents in too. A sack of recipe cards with top reducing tips on the back reinforced the messaging learnt during the game and left players with a little gift from Food Savvy. The use of the library space allowed us to reach households which we might otherwise not reach online.
Lots of children have “been interacting with the puzzle while their parents read the information.
The Christmas display “ has been very well received - in fact there is a family doing the puzzle as I am typing this. Stowmarket Library
Ipswich Library
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Bloggers Challenge Over the month of February 2020, nine #FoodSavvy Champions from Norfolk and Suffolk trialled food-saving products to help them make the most of their food. Summary: The influencer #FoodSavvy challenge repeated in Year Two of our #FoodSavvy campaign, following the success of Year One. The nine diverse influencers from across both Norfolk and Suffolk included a male chef, a mother of two and other well-known influencers and lifestyle bloggers from across the two counties. The participants were all at different stages on their food saving journeys. Some were already wasting little food, but had plenty of tips and recipes to share with their followers, while others were interested in the topic, but hadn’t yet taken any actions. Four influencers had taken part in the challenge the previous year, which worked well as they were able to offer advice to the new influencers. Throughout the month of February, the influencers took part in the #FoodSavvy challenge to see to what extent they could reduce their food waste. They trialled a host of food saving products, received Food Savvy tips and weekly mini challenges to keep them engaged. Influencers released blogs and videos as they moved through the month, sharing their experiences and providing inspirational content, such as recipes and tips they have picked up. Inspiring lots of their followers and wider networks to get savvy with their food. In order to track the impact, the bloggers were asked to log their avoidable food waste and plastics. They had two key weigh ins in week one and week four of the challenge. The bloggers were given the target of reducing their waste by 30%.
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Holly | MissHollyP
Laura | DinkyInNorfolk
Cassie | My Thrifty Life
Hannah Laurena | LifeDietHealth
Impact: • Between the influencers, their web pages were viewed over 75,463 times • The influencers on average reduced their food waste by 40% over the month and reduced their plastics by 35% • Saving on average over five kg of food • The #FoodSavvy hashtag was used in 140 tweets over the challenge period, 80 of which were from the influencers • The #FoodSavvy hashtag was used in 85 Instagram posts with over 680 comments and 29 contributors over the challenge period. These local influencers are trusted messengers for their large followings who look to emulate their successes in reducing waste and saving money. Learning: Building a good relationship with the influencers required a constant line of communication, but the effort was rewarded with high levels of engagement. Streamlining communications by setting up a private Instagram group proved most effective to give updates, but also to allow a space to discuss the different challenges and to share knowledge on how to best save food. The #FoodSavvy Challenge continues to be a great example of how influencers can spread the word about #FoodSavvy to new audiences. Influencers with families received high levels of interest. This meant we were able to raise awareness and communicate the FoodSavvy campaign to one of our key target audiences, families with young children. In Year Three, consideration will be given to building on the Instagram group to create an online mutually supportive community to share experiences, run competitions and learn together. The ‘live’ videos that many bloggers did, in particular Holly Parish received great engagement. Next time, in order to measure the true impact of this, we will capture the number of viewers and have a clear call to action of having their followers sign up to the #Foodsavvy Challenge.
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Our Digital Communications
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C A M P A I GCNA M OP VA E IRGVNI E SW
Covid Response Summary: Covid-19 restrictions called for a change of tack for Food Savvy communications. On the ground events and installations were put on hold while we rolled out a programme of digital engagement. This included: • Web content on making the most of a shop or what’s already in the home • Where to store things to make them last longer and making the most of your freezer • Savvy ingredient swaps • Meal planning and batch cooking to reduce waste and time spent in the kitchen • New ways to use tired ingredients such as pasta and eggs • Getting kids cooking and reducing waste • Cook-alongs with local chefs • Fakeaways – home-made-food-saving take out • Competitions for adults and kids Our primary audiences were young people and families but we also sought to reach anyone whose food habits were open to change during the pandemic.
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D I G I TA L C O M M U N I C AT I O N S
Amplifying the Message Web content was supported with a suite of social media assets. We collected these assets into an open source folder and shared with over 350 organisations within the Food Savvy network, actively encouraging them to use the assets to help local householders make the most of their food in a difficult time. These assets were also broadcast from council channels. Key campaign partners such as the East of England Co-op promoted the messages via their channels. We also amplified Food Savvy messaging through the use of targeted promoted ads on Facebook. Ads were targeted at households within the large towns within Norfolk and Suffolk. A second set of ads focused on people within these areas with kids.
Reach Of the 3,341 visitors to the website during this period, 19% were local (compared to 13% annually). 47% of the total annual visits to the site occurred during this period. A note on local visitation: In the first year of Food Savvy, 20% of website visitors were local. In the autumn of 2019 we set up Google ads campaigns to drive traffic to the website. Whilst ads were set up to target a local audience, we saw an increase in both local and national visitors to the website. Average time spent on the Food Savvy website rose from one minute to one minute 30 seconds. The pages that attracted the most visits include: Main meal recipes, the main Food Savvy tips page, the Delicious Drawing competition and a blog on tackling fussy eating. ​ During this period we greatly increased the number of people coming to the site from social media. Dec 2018-March 2020 2.75%, April 2020-August 2020 15.45%. 30
Social Media In the three months from April – July, 632 tweets and 224 Instagram posts were shared with #FoodSavvy. These account for 39% of the tweets in the nine month period from Sept, and 48% of the Instagram posts.* 257 individuals engaged on social media. Over 41% of the annual social media engagement in 3 months.* 3,300,000 Twitter timeline deliveries account for 39% of the total reach (8,500,000). 499,38 impressions account for 55% of the total reach (910,000). We can see that concerted efforts on social media increased our reach, engagement and the number of people being directed to the Food Savvy website. There was a greater impact on Instagram.
Media The digital campaign, Food Savvy Facebook Live events and Delicious Drawings competition (see below) collectively generated 19 pieces of local media coverage with total Opportunities To See amounting to 1.9 million. Outlets included: • Emma Crowhurst, a Suffolk chef leading Food Savvy live sessions was hosted on BBC Radio Suffolk • Lynn News • Evening Star (Ipswich, print), • Anglian Daily Times (Essex, print) • Babergh Mid Suffolk (Web) • Suffolk County Council (Web) • Ipswich Star (Web) • East Anglian Daily Times (Web) KL.FM *33% would be the average benchmark
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C A M PA I G N S
User Feedback We asked our digital followers how we could improve. 143 people replied.
I find the website engaging and informative. From my use of the site, I wouldn’t recommend any change, though I could possibly explore it more and more often to be better informed.
It’s a great campaign, I can’t think of anything to improve it sorry!
Advertise, let more people know you exist
The website is so full of useful and practical information so I can’t see how that can be improved. Is this information going to schools? If children are on board, they will, hopefully, be able to get their parents involved so that it becomes a family responsibility and aim to become more food savvy.
I think that they are doing a pretty good job and provide good advice to people who aren’t very organised with their shopping and meal planning.
It’s great, just need more time to look at everything. Its great to get others to look for themselves and see the impact of food waste, the money waste and how simple it is to save both (rather than nagging!)
Keep sending the newsletter - thanks
No negative comments were received but useful additions were made. There were requests for: More content for those living alone and vegetarians Greater visibility in schools, food banks and supermarkets More workshops, quizzes and giveaways Information on a ‘planetary diet’ - eating foods which help us to stay within planetary guidelines, and packaging reduction • More information on what to do with small amounts of waste, how to recycle oil and how to preserve food • Local food share schemes • • • •
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Facebook Lives #LockDownKictchen Summary: Food Savvy hosted ten cook-alongs with local and national top chefs. Each session had a fresh food waste angle. 30,000 reached, 644 people commented on posts and 208 watched live. The live sessions now sit on the Food Savvy website to be watched again. Presenter
Date
Theme
Maria Broadbent, Local Chef
14/05/2020
Sustainable dinners for under a tenner
Natalie Coleman, former Masterchef winner
30/04/2020
Good Food on a budget & Food Saving
Emma Crowhurst, Local Chef
08/04/2020
Making your food go further
Tom Hunt, Celebrity Eco-Chef
07/05/2020
Eating for Pleasure, People and Planet
Nena Foster, Natural Chef
21/05/2020
Cooking with kids and plant based
Claire Tolliday, Suffolk Master Composter
13/06/2020
Home Composting demo
Jenny Dawson, Food Waste Entrepeneur
24/06/2020
Quick Pickle
Mark Breen, Hubbub Chef
08/07/2020
Eating seasonally, made easy
Beth Thomas, MasterChef Finalist
12/08/2020
Eating root to shoot
Nicole Freeman, Chef from The Kid’s Kitchen
19/08/2020
Savoury rolls that save leftovers.
Events are ranked in order of the number of minutes viewed by July. Those early in the programming have the greatest likelihood of ranking highly. Emma Crowhust received the greatest number of views on the day due to promotion.
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User Feedback Learning: Overall the ‘Lives’ have more engagement than pre-recorded videos uploaded to the Food Savvy partner’s Facebook pages. They offer a great way to interact with our audience and allow for a two-way conversation, which is lost on platforms such as YouTube. Sessions with plenty of props and cooking were popular. Focusing on a specific framing helped with engagement, such as ‘pickling’ or ‘vegbox reveal.’ Ensuring that there was a network ready to share the sessions pre and post broadcast was key to high viewership. While Facebook does not provide data on the number of local viewers, the live sessions were promoted extensively within Norfolk and Suffolk and the comments lead us to believe that the majority of the live viewers were local. Three of the hosts were local which also helped to engage a local audience. A fourth local host was scheduled to run a session on wormeries which unfortunately had to be postponed. A number more local chefs were asked to partake but did not feel comfortable. Moving forward we need to build more contact with local chefs and food personalities who are skilling when it comes to ‘chopping and chatting’ and feel comfortable with the Facebook Live format. Organisations such as Aldeburgh Food Festival have offered to help circulate the opportunity in the year ahead.
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#DeliciousDrawings Competition In May, #FoodSavvy ran a month-long competition which challenged children to come up with food saving ideas to keep food from the bin. The winner and runner up’s designs were showcased in local East Of England Co-op stores across Norfolk and Suffolk. Winners Amy Cawley from Kings Lynn and Jacob Brough from Ipswich received a £100 East of England vouchers, a cooking set, a personalised apron and a recipe book. Reach: Running from May – June the Delicious Drawings competition achieved: •
85 entries 16 pieces in local media, with opportunities to see or hear 1.7 million
• • Mentions on BBC Radio Suffolk and in newspapers, Ipswich Star, East
Anglian Daily Times • 10K plus unique visitors to the FoodSavvy website
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Finn remembered his poster and took his advice this morning at “ breakfast, only taking a small amount of cereal rather than taking too much then “ leaving it!
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My daughter enjoyed drawing a vision of a hero fridge freezer pitted against an Evil Bin complete with fruit in danger of a binning and bottles waiting to be recycled!
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Thank you for filling some time for us in lockdown and focused around such an important issue too
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We have made some very nice pancakes and cookies from the cookery book!
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C A M PA I G N S
Winner, Amy Cawley, Kings Lynn, Age 10
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Amy is grinning from ear to ear and keeps saying that she can’t believe that she has won! Thank you so much for letting us know and for giving Amy the opportunity to have a purpose for drawing and creating; something she loves doing. She can’t believe that her picture is going to become a real poster!
Winner, Jacob Brough, Ipswich, Age 11
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Learning: We are pleased with the level of engagement the Delicious Drawings competition received. Engaging schools, local press and competition listing sites helped a simple activity to have great reach. Access to Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils’ wide network of schools meant we could distribute information about the competition away from social media, which at the time was becoming increasingly busy with messages. Previous engagement with schools had involved a Food Savvy handbook which teachers and educators could take inspiration from, including lesson plans and recipes. However, due to Covid-19 restrictions and school closures, we reviewed our approach and decided on a light touch approach to communicating the key messages.
Niall O’Keeffe, East of England Co-op joint CEO, said “ It has been great to have been involved with something so positive with Food Savvy, especially during the coronavirus lock down. The competition entries were all so innovative and varied it was incredibly hard to whittle them down but we somehow managed it and we are looking forward to having the winners’ posters up in their local stores.
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Digital Period Learning Despite the unprecedented changes to how to we live, brought by Covid-19, the crisis has accelerated our learning and experience of delivering campaign strands online, trialing new platforms, and testing engagement ideas for new audiences. Taking the time to tune into the changing needs of households was instrumental to the digital campaign’s success, as was our ability to respond quickly with relevant content. It provided us with the opportunity to: • Explore content themes with immediate appeal for householders, but which
have more covert food saving messaging. For example, cooking with kids, working with what’s already in your cupboard, quick dishes with eggs. • Hone our social media strategy and direct greater resource to content creation, message testing and targeted ads. • Offer timely free content to local partners in order to build future relationships.Build out the Food Savvy website and improve existing content and structure. • Forge relations with local chefs and amplifiers. Promotional strategy We stopped using Google Ads in May 2020. This has led to a decrease in the total traffic to the website but not a decrease in local traffic. We retained local audience visitation by increasing our local social media activity. We now have a great deal of timely content ready to be further promoted in the year ahead. We also need to continue to identify fitting content amplification partners and strengthen relationships with existing partners to ensure that our content reaches local groups, including those without digital access. Activities such as the Delicious Drawings competition led to spikes in the website traffic and further competitions and promotions will be used within the year ahead. 39
Key Learnings
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Key Learnings Behaviour change Covid-19 has led to a great change in our eating habits. Households are planning meals more carefully, using the freezer more and getting better at using leftovers. These behaviours, coupled with an increase in the number of households valuing their food, have resulted in a reduction in food waste. However, a smaller proportion took up key food saving behaviours such as writing dates on products, adjusting the fridge temperature, portion sizing or storing food in the right place. Attention also needs to be given to these lesser-known behaviours to further decrease household food waste. Motivations matter Plastic is still a bigger issue for householders than food waste, but interest in climate change is growing. As the UK economy and household budgets are hard hit by Covid-19, connecting the dots between climate change, food waste and saving money is more vital than ever. Collaboration is key Collaborations take time. Over the last two years Food Savvy has worked with over 100 organisations and influencers. We will need to work with a greater number of partners in order to embed the campaign locally and reach the scale needed. Campaign partners such as the East of England Coop, regional chefs, bloggers and schools have been instrumental in spreading the campaign messaging on the ground and online. These partnerships are especially important when Covid-19 related restrictions on high footfall events limit Food Savvy’s ability to exhibit at fairs and events. 41
Community support The influencers taking part in the Food Savvy challenge benefitted from the support of others taking part. Similarly, in the 2019 Food Savvy Lunch Club we saw that camaraderie and healthy competition went a long way in helping participants to cut waste. Peer support and accountability has a big role to play. Local pride Local chefs attracted as much interest as celebrity chefs during the Lockdown Kitchen Live series. Food Savvy primary school children were of interest to local press. Food Savvy can help diverse communities to share and celebrate food saving successes. Find the right hook This year’s competitions, social media and digital content have increased traffic to the website. We sought to connect with household’s lockdown experiences and use the time for change as a means to introduce new habits to save time and money while having fun. Don’t over-do digital We successfully increased digital engagement in the latter part of the year, but less resource was given to on-theground engagement and ensuring that we reached everyone, the old, the young and the digitally excluded. Street advertising and partnerships with stores, schools and community centres help to strike the right balance. Take time to target the right audience Targeted messaging via social media had a high click through rate and drove local traffic to the website. Audience segmentation helped us to reach high wasting households such as young families. 42
Taking Our Learning Forward
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Year Three The chief ambition for the third year of the partnership is to broaden the campaign’s reach by bringing learning from Year One and Two to scale whilst continuing to innovate and test new approaches. Our target audience will also broaden to include financially stretched households and older residents. Expectations for the year ahead: Strong emphasis on digital campaigning with timely hooks, competitions and digital communities Profile local people and their food waste experiences Make the most of safe & accessible public spaces street advertising, stores, schools and community centres Offering flexible and holistic opportunities for employee engagement Increase our use of paid advertising when we know we have messages that land Focus on lesser adopted food saving behaviours
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Get Involved Become a Food Savvy ambassador. Spread the message with your audience or organization.
Partner on a new campaign.
Get Food Savvy in your school, university or youth club.
Set up a Community Fridge in your area.
Engage your employees. Help them to cut food and plastic waste.
Join us on the #FoodSavvy journey #FoodSavvy journey Campaigns@hubbub.org.uk Food Savvy Norfolk
Food Savvy Suffolk
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Conclusion In the first two years we have bought over 50 partners on board, engaged 30,000 local people through events and digital activities, helping a proportion to significantly cut their waste. Covid-19 has made delivery of the campaign challenging and yet it has made delivery of the campaign more vital than ever, as household and local authority budgets become further stretched, and interest in the link between our lifestyles and climate change has increased. Much has been learnt in the first two years of the campaign and we are proud of the partnership’s ability to adapt and still deliver a positive impact when faced with the novel coronavirus. We’re pleased to be able to share our learning from this formative period, and look forward to the year ahead. Year Three will forge new partnerships, hone and amplify existing materials and trial new approaches to ensure that Food Savvy remains relevant to households across Norfolk and Suffolk and that our seven-year goal remains in sight. The final word on food waste The challenge we face is great and we cannot create this much needed culture shift around food waste on our own. We are calling on anyone with an interest in improving our environment and food culture to join the Food Savvy community and share our materials and your experiences with your community, colleagues, family and friends.
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About Food Savvy is a partnership between Norfolk County Council and Suffolk Waste Partnership, and environmental charity, Hubbub. Email campaigns@hubbub.org.uk to get involved www.foodsavvy.org.uk
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