Our sustainability goals
Our customers, suppliers and people can all take comfort that Anglian Country Inns is a hospitality business which fully ‘gets’ the conversation of our era and has taken significant strides towards becoming as sustainable as possible, with an in-house team meeting monthly to focus on how we can be even better in all things sustainability – caring for the environment, doing the right thing by our people and looking after the communities which we serve.
Our people
More than most businesses, hospitality is about people. We exist to be hospitable to others, which tends to attract people who are kind, value people’s wishes and want to do the right thing. That truth also informs how Anglian Country Inns operates at a human level within itself, for itself and its people.
- We ensure that the recruitment, training, career development, and promotional opportunities of our people are based solely on merit and job-related criteria. We aim to create an inclusive workforce that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve. We foster an inclusive environment where everyone feels welcome, valued, and respected. We believe it’s the right thing to do – always.
- We have promoted 51% of our management team from within the business and 60% of our leadership team have been with the business for more than 5 years.
- We offer our team discounted gym membership and encourage them to eat better with our ‘eat better ethos’ driven campaign. We believe this support and education is part of our duty of care to our people who work so hard for us.
It is through evidencing this kind of support to the career development and pastoral care of our people that we won the Publican Awards Best Pub Employer 2025, of which we are so proud.
Our communities
- Our pubs and restaurants are the junction box of community interaction, they are where people connect, celebrate, laugh and foster that sense of belonging; as the lyrics of Cheers rings out ‘sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name’. Our venues are often where people feel at their happiest and most connected to society, where their loneliness is forgotten and their mental health calmed.
Operating a business like ours demands that we become part of the community in which we serve and celebrate its traditions, charms and cultures. Whether that’s the quiz nights, fireworks nights, carol singing, oyster festivals or the open mic shanty singing practice on Monday nights in Norfolk. We don’t just provide venues for culture to exist; we are that culture. - Being an integral part of a community is also about being there for people at the most difficult times of their lives – we host many life celebrations across our venues, and we have created very long partnerships with a series of local charities, from the Fisherman's Mission in Norfolk, to the Garden House Hospice in Hertfordshire. We also support ‘only a pavement away’, the charity which supports people looking to rebuild their lives through hospitality employment opportunities.
- Fundamentally, at the very core of what we do is our purpose, our raison d’etre, our reason for being, and that is, to ‘make people happy’, our company strategy – to make our community a better place for today and tomorrow and to celebrate life’s moments great and small.
3* Food Made Good Award
We are delighted to have been awarded the maximum 3 stars Food Made Good Award, by the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA), which measures restaurants' sustainability and impact, across three categories - sourcing, society and environment.
We are particularly proud of the fact that ‘Sourcing’ was Anglian Country Inns' highest scoring section, reflecting the hard work which has gone into achieving good levels of traceability for our top 5 ingredients, widespread use of local and seasonal produce on our menus, and the purchasing of ethically sourced ingredients such as coffee and cocoa.
