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Impact Blog – Cardiff
August 2023
Gaucho Cardiff is opening its doors in St David’s, Cardiff’s biggest retail zone, which not only comes with a beautiful space to dine in but also one truly well supported with sustainability initiatives. From a fully segregated recycling set-up to hosting eco-craft fairs and encouraging families to protect pollinators, Gaucho Cardiff has found a home in St David’s that aligns with so many of our own sustainability aims.
We are setting out with energy reduction firmly on the agenda in Cardiff. Alongside the most efficient equipment and heat recovery systems being in place, we will be helping our team with behaviour change and understanding unnecessary energy usage with the installation of Cap Energy software. This platform allows us to see the real-time energy consumption from every circuit in the restaurant and will help us to pinpoint where savings can be made through staff operating in the most efficient manner.
The opening of Gaucho Cardiff, the third for the group this year, has also been an exciting opportunity to integrate some of the incredible locally sourced produce from Wales onto our menu: We have sourced Welsh lamb cutlets from the Brecon Beacons and the Welsh Valleys, which are located just 50 miles from Cardiff City Centre, keeping the food miles of this product extremely low. In addition, our fish supplier is local to the area and will help ensure that we are only ever putting fish on our menu rated 1 or 2 by the Marine Conservation Society.
Our Welsh cheese platter features artisan produce from the Welsh Cheese Company, which places sustainability at the heart of its operations. The majority of the cheeses they sell are organic, with many producers having been leaders in the organic field for decades, all cheesemakers farm on a very small scale with low inputs and very high animal welfare standards.
The Hafod cheddar on our menu is handmade at Holden Dairy Farm which is owned by the co-founder of the UK Sustainable Food Trust, Partick Holden and is Wales’ longest certified organic dairy farm. Our Golden Cenarth is an organic rind-washed soft cheese from Caws Cenarth in West Wales and is one of a diverse range of organic cheeses produced by this dairy.
Attention has even been given to the deliveries at the Welsh Cheese Company, ensuring that the vast majority use wool insulation, which is entirely compostable and biodegradable but is also made out of what is essentially a waste product from the dairy farm.
All of these fantastic additions sit alongside our signature Argentinian beef, with which we are embarking on the next phase of our project, directly working with our farms in Argentina to reduce at source while continuing to invest in offsetting with our charity partners Not For Sale.
Each farm will be following its own carbon emission plan from our carbon footprint project to ensure that land is being managed in the most sustainable way, with great attention given to the quality and health of the soil, supporting biodiversity on farms, and increasing crops and legumes to capture carbon from the atmosphere. From there, we are researching ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ to understand how this method of production can further reduce and capture greenhouse gas emissions at the farm level, working collaboratively to understand what can be applied to our farms.
We are so pleased that our eighth opening outside of London comes with so many opportunities in the space of sustainability, we look forward to seeing what other initiatives can be put in place and for our team to get involved in at Gaucho Cardiff.
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