For the food

We know that our food is a big part of the environmental impact of our business and we’re doing everything we can to keep that impact as low as possible. From our famous Southern African PERi-PERi chillies, to our locally sourced chicken and chips from the Ireland and the UK, we’re looking at making sure we’re sourcing our food responsibly and having a positive social impact wherever we can. 

Our Food Policy   Chicken Welfare  Sourcing our food from all the right places

Our Food Policy is a manifesto that covers everything from sustainability to health and wellbeing. Everything we buy has to meet the incredibly high standards of responsible and ethical sourcing laid out in our Food Policy. We’re also working towards targets that will reduce salt, sugar and saturated fat in our food, so that it doesn’t impact healthy lifestyle choices.

Working with suppliers

We work closely with our suppliers to improve ethical sourcing and reduce the impact on the planet. Working with Mondra, we’ve created a carbon footprint of all of our meals so we can see where the hotspots are, and how we can reduce them.

Making a change

Plastics

If we want to combat food waste and give our customers the freshest food possible, we need packaging. Our Food Policy clearly states that all packaging on new products must be widely recyclable, and we are working to increase the amount of recycled content in our own packaging. Along with other ethical businesses, we’ve aligned our targets with the Plastics Pact.

Fair Trade

Our hot chocolate is Fairtrade certified and we’re working towards getting 100% of the sugar in our ingredients certified as Fairtrade. We’re also working with coffee and tea suppliers who are engaging in programmes to ensure that they’re trading fairly and making a positive impact to their communities. Our policy also encourages suppliers to source fairly traded and ethical ingredients as much as possible, we'd rather pay the premium to know they're responsibly sourced.

Protecting the rainforest

While we’re trying to protect the rainforest by sourcing sustainably, we’re also using the power of our brand to help protect this vital natural resource. In 2017 we joined over 60 companies in signing a statement of support for the Cerrado Manifesto, a call to action to stop deforestation in a threatened and biologically important area of rainforest in Brazil.

• While we’re trying to protect the rainforest by sourcing sustainably, we’re also using the power of our brand to help protect this vital natural resource. In 2017 we joined over 60 companies and signed a statement of support for the Cerrado Manifesto, to stop deforestation in a threatened and biologically important area of the Brazilian rainforest. 
• We also make sure all our palm oil is sustainably sourced according to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)  
• Since the end of 2015, all our soy’s been responsibly sourced under the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS). This isn’t just the soy we use as an ingredient, but also in our supply chain too. And since 2019, we’ve been signatories of the UK Soy Manifesto to move any soy usage in our products and chicken feed to verified conversion-free soy. We’re currently working on implementing EUDR legislation with all our suppliers as step on this journey. 

Menu options for everyone

Our flame-grilled PERi-PERi Chicken is legendary, but that doesn’t mean our vegetarian or plant-based fans, or anyone looking to cut down on meat has to miss out. We’ve revamped our menu with loads of vegetarian and plant-based options from our Beanie Burger to The Great Imitator Wrap - and we’re always experimenting with new options.

 

Chickens are obviously a big part of what we do, and it’s important to us that we stand up for chicken welfare and try to raise standards across the food industry. All of our chicken meets high standards of animal welfare, food safety and environmental protection.

Higher chicken welfare standards 

We’re proud to say the chickens we source are from farms with leading facilities and:

• Have access to natural light    
• Have pecking objects so that they can do what chickens like to do...peck!    
• Have perches, bales or bale-like objects so they can play around and display natural behaviours    
• Are only given antibiotics when they’re ill, prescribed by a registered vet. Routine use of antibiotics is completely banned    
• Eat soy that meets the UK Soy Manifesto standards via RTRS credits or better. We're making sure our suppliers support sustainable soy production and avoid deforestation, aligning with EU and UK regulations.

And we won’t stop there. Nando’s has introduced a Chicken Supplier Onboarding, Welfare Assessment and Monitoring Policy, as well as our own Welfare Standards, designed to drive continuous welfare improvements.

We signed the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) in 2020, pledging to implement higher standards of welfare for chickens in our UK supply chain.  We track our progress against this commitment, which you can see here. 

Two out of the six criteria are complete – natural light and enrichment are both at 100%. A further three are progressing well - over 90% of our supply meets the reduced stocking density requirements, over 80% complies with the slaughter requirements and the vast majority (98%) of our practices are independently checked through third-party audits. It’s an extra layer of accountability that helps us stay transparent, consistent, and committed to doing the right thing.

In the UK, when it comes to breed, there are not enough slower-growing birds available.  We operate in fresh chicken, making sourcing from further afield much harder. We continue to work with the wider industry to find a solution. 

We describe our food as modern Afro-Portuguese cuisine. It harks back to when Portuguese explorers brought their traditionally flame-grilled spatchcock chicken to Mozambique, and it mixed with African spices, chillies, lemons and garlic to create PERi-PERi chicken. Our founders then opened the first Nando’s in South Africa back in 1987 to celebrate this seriously delicious flavour sensation.

We’re always on the lookout for ways to introduce new foods and flavours from our heartland, so you’ll often see new and improved recipes on our menus, from seasonal specials to innovative additions that perfectly complement our chicken. To make all this happen, we aim to work with suppliers who share our ambition to protect the environment by reducing waste and sourcing sustainably.

Celebrating the home of PERi-PERi

Here at Nando’s, we’re proud to be known for our PERi-PERi flavour. To make sure our flavour is always exceptional and always unique, we have our very own trademarked Birds Eye Chilli grown in the sun and soil of our Southern African homeland. Find out more about our family of farmers and how we get the best PERi-PERi from that little chilli here.

Getting the good stuff

With certain foods, we know we have to find it in the places that have the highest quality ingredients and from people who know how to do it properly.

We source our halloumi from its spiritual home in Cyprus, where it’s made from a combination of goat, sheep and cow’s milk from animals fed exclusively on grass.

Our green olives come from the sunny slopes of Greece where they grow fat and ripe in the warm Mediterranean climate. And our balsamic vinegar comes from a small, family-run business in Modena, Italy, where they’ve been perfecting the blending process over many, many years.

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