Business resilience themes: Premises, People, Products and Services
Business Profile
Sprigg is a food takeaway found in the heart of Glasgow, serving fresh salads, snacks and coffee. The business has three premises: two shop units and a warehouse. Sustainability is at the heart of the company’s ethos and brand, as well as to save costs.
The majority of company’s sales are takeaway, with some sit-in and some external catering. Distribution is a critical aspect of the business, particularly in relation to their day-to-day operations; moving goods from the preparation kitchen to the two stores, and from cafés to individuals via delivery services.
Climate impacts
Sprigg is exposed to a number of climate risks which have affected the businesses operations in recent years. These include:
- Overheating risk to food and staff. Both shops have experienced overheating during particularly high temperatures in recent summers. This has impacted on staff welfare, customer comfort, and could post a risk to food safety, particularly for open-display fridge units.
- Adverse weather has affected customer footfall. Periods of stormy or wet weather have had a considerable impact on footfall to the shops. There have been observed drops of 40% during adverse weather days, mostly due to trains not running and/or people choosing not to travel into the city and working from home instead.
- Disruption to supply chain. The business relies on daily deliveries between preparation kitchen and shop units. Deliveries and collections have been impacted by major roads disruption due to flooding. There is some storage at preparation kitchen, however the business relies on the flow of regular deliveries for fresh goods.
- Increased costs of goods (e.g. climate shocks causing food price spikes). The business prides itself on its fresh produce and range of ingredients customers can choose from. Some ingredients have been impacted by unexpected climate shocks to food production, locally and globally. The business has had to take certain items off the menu and replace them, such as during the shortage of salad from Spain due to extreme drought. The business’ custom bowls provide more flexibility to substitute ingredients than the fixed bowls, which would require changes to menu boards.
“The temperature in the shop was chronically bad … and it wasn’t when we opened it. I mean it’s always been warm, but it’s never been as bad as it was last year and even this year.”
Tom McDermott, Owner of Sprigg
Actions taken
In 2023 Sprigg took part in a pilot project as part of Glasgow City Council’s Green Business Support programme, which helps local companies transition to Net-Zero, reduce their energy costs and become more resilient to climate change.
As part of this project, the sustainability charity Sniffer supported Sprigg to understand its climate risks and prioritise the resilience actions the business can take. These included:
- Responding to heat stress. Overheating during summer months was identified as a critical issue. Sprigg decided to install heat reducing film after a recommendation and visit to a nearby shoe shop that also use the film. It is claimed to reduce heat penetration through the glass by 66%. This has been combined with installation of an air-con unit.
- Externalised machinery in the warehouse production unit. To address overheating issues at the warehouse unit where the business prepares the fresh food, Sprigg decided to move some machinery outside. Workers noticed the walk-in chiller was giving off a lot of heat, so decided to site that outside. Since then they have noted a positive impact on working temperatures.
- Exploring installing solar panels on the production unit. Power supply to the production unit was highlighted as a risk, and vulnerable to extreme weather impacting local energy supply. Sprigg are currently investigating funding to install solar panels at the production unit, both to reduce the environmental impact of energy consumption and provide a more resilient energy supply that would not be impacted by wider network outages.
“My advice would be do what you can. Try and see sustainability as a commercial benefit rather than a cost. It can feel overwhelming but get started and explore the support that is out there. It’s our role as SMEs to lead by example and encourage the big businesses to change too, and deliver positive impact at scale.”
Tom McDermott, Owner of Sprigg
Owner Tom McDermott and Sniffer’s Aoife Hutton inspect new solar film used on the cafe windows
