Our “Green” journey

 

The Patissier embarked on our journey to become a “greener” company in 2019.  When we first decided that we should do our part for the environment, there were some pushbacks from within. Will our efforts make a difference, given that we are just one small shop? What will it cost us? Will customers appreciate what we are trying to do, especially if it affects their wallets? But management was convinced that this is the right thing to do and well, the rest is history.

We started off by looking at changes that we can make relatively quickly. These include

-  Our new candle policy, where we stipulate the number of complementary candles that we provide based on cake size. Previously, we give whatever number of candles that customers wanted. This resulted in more than 150,000 candles being given out every year. We now charge 10 cents for each additional candle that customers want. And this has resulted in a 50% drop in the demand for candles. Some may feel that paying 10 cents for a candle is exorbitant, especially when supermarkets will only charge 5 cents for every plastic bag you take from them. Then again, 100% of what we collect in Candle Money goes to our nominated NGO for wildlife rescue.

 

-  Changing our cake carrier-bag from plastics to woven. This was generally well received by our customers. But we did receive one strongly-worded "feedback" when we first made the switch, that the new woven bag looked rather “aunty” and not quite as classy as the transparent plastics carrier we provided previously (we beg to differ, of course). But many customers soon discovered that in addition to being recyclable (we do see increasing number of customers who bring their own woven bags when collecting cakes), our woven carrier also make for a sturdy grocery shopping bag. We even found that our woven bag was being resold at one of them sundry shop in Chinatown!

 

-  Bio-degradable spork. So instead of plastics spoons that we used to give out with our cake slices, we made the switch to a bio-degradable spork. This translates to an increase in cost (yes, “Green” products are generally more expensive), which we have readily absorbed.

-  Incorporating sustainable food ingredients in our cake recipes. This involved buying ingredients from (typically) smaller-scale producers that cultivate and package their produce using sustainable practices. Such switch-over require a fair bit of work by our chefs, as every change of ingredient to our existing cake recipes will require pretty extensive product testing before they can be rolled out to our customers. This is to ensure that product quality is maintained. We are also applying more of such sustainable ingredients in our new cake recipes.

 There is lots more that we can/should do in our “Green” journey. Our candles still come in plastic wrappers, for example, which we are now sourcing for paper substitute. Some of our cakes, given their texture, still require a plastic wrap around the circumference to better maintain their form – we do not have a viable alternative that will not compromise on the aesthetics (yet) but we will continue looking. And when customers these days insist that we provide another 5 big and 3 small candles but claim that they do not have cash with them, they can now PayNow us the money and we will help them drop the same into our “Candle Money” box! 😊