By Lewis Bennett, Catering Manager at sprigg

Here at sprigg the Full of Beans Campaign has been an exciting opportunity to demonstrate that beans can be fresh, vibrant and served cold as a part of a healthy lunch. We decided to use butter beans for our Full of Beans special as their flavour is creamy and mild – a perfect bean to carry the flavour of our Arran wholegrain mustard, honey and dill dressing which was designed to pair with them. Their larger size means that they stand out alongside multiple other ingredients in our popular bowls and don’t get lost in the mix. 

We’re passionate about the food at sprigg being fresh, flavourful and nutritious as well as fast to grab on the go and ready to eat. Across our custom salad bar, bean based dishes such as falafel, hummus, boston baked beans and our honey & dill butter bean special offer sources of protein, fibre and carbohydrates which are popular with customers who monitor what they eat and want to feel full until dinner.

Being a business which relies heavily on fresh produce, it is important to also have a steady source of ingredients which do not require daily deliveries. Being able to hold stock of beans and pulses for longer periods of time brings efficiency of food miles and workload – both for our chefs placing orders and our suppliers fulfilling them. By having an awareness of how delivery costs affect our ingredient prices, we can help our suppliers keep our drops efficient and their delivery costs down, which helps them to keep our ingredient costs affordable. In turn, having items in our kitchen which are shelf stable and can be prepared to requirements combats food waste, as we do not need to make calculations on sales days in advance.

Over the course of March, we have seen excellent uptake in our Full of Beans special: it started off slow, with customers needing a little convincing in the first week and approximately 80% sell out in the second but every day since March 15th we have completely sold out. This means that for March we have reached more than 1200 portions of butter beans in sprigg bowls! 

We plan to keep beans coming in our daily specials and encourage customers to keep choosing bean-based ingredients in their bowls. Thank you to Glasgow Community Food Network and Glasgow Food Policy Partnership for reaching out and involving us in their campaign – we’re excited to keep our eyes on the campaign and future challenges!

Editors note: in March we asked Glasgow restaurants, cafes, and caterers to put beans on their menus. You can find out more about the competition and how businesses got involved by going to the Full of Beans webpage here. The #beansonthemenu challenge is a global campaign by Beans is How. You can find out more here.