Back to your roots…

Last week RHP went back to their academic roots to join a seminar at Leeds Met University (run by the International Centre of Responsible Tourism and presented by Jonathan Mitchell) to hear a little more about the origins of tourism value chains.

By understanding the origins of your menu’s ingredients list you can deliver strength to your ethical, responsible and environmental marketing message and streamline your costs.

So, where does your food came from? Do you or can you say your menu is produced locally? How much of the customer spend is staying within the local community and really supporting farmers or producers directly? What does this mean for your business?

Questions, Questions…. What you need here is some value chain analysis!!!! And guess who you can ask to help you with that…? (It’s us, RHP – just in case you were wondering)

You could ask… Kaplinsky and Morris (2004) to explain it

“The value chain describes the full range of activities which are required to bring a product or service from conception, through the different phases of production (involving a combination of physical transformation and input of various producer services), delivery to final consumers, and final disposal after use.”

You could also ask… RHP to do some of it for your business…

Think for example, the apple sauce accompanying the locally reared pig you are promoting on your menu. The apples were bought from the local market on Tuesday, you are supporting your local traders, at a great price and amazing quality. You might be supporting a local producer too, making the day of your loyal clients by supplying the very best, locally produced apple sauce and finishing off their dinner to perfection… empty plate!!

Alternatively, Those humble apples could’ve travelled cross country, sailed in on a ship or flown in from miles away to be beaten into sauce submission and get left lonely in a dish unloved, uneaten and end its life in general waste (not even in the food bin for AD or composting).

Value chain analysis was first employed on the cocoa bean back in the colonial past to maximise the efficiency of the extraction process and the efficiency of profit extraction. (Although, let’s face it for the purposes of this article, it would have been better if it was apples!)

The model has grown up since then, but this valuation technique achieves the same outcomes now, maximising profit from the bottom up, tracking business links and finding the leakages and holes in supply (profit and ethical).

Asking lots of questions, gathering lots of information and building up a bigger picture of the situation is what it’s about (each step needs to be monitored and recorded and it takes some expertise)!

Why don’t you make sure your apples have happy roots…? (and they don’t fall too far from the tree…) Give RHP a call and we can get your apples, profits and responsible credentials rolling in the right direction!!

Email us now at [email protected] or call 0845 5913635 to see how we can help!