The Blonde Beet in Stamford ditches single-use cups in favour of ‘returnables’
A town café is stopping the use of disposable cups for takeaway hot drinks in favour of a new ‘returnables’ scheme.
The Blonde Beet, Stamford’s first plant-based café, was set up in 2020 by Jo Kemp and her husband Nick with an ethos of making as little negative impact on the environment as possible.
Non-recyclable waste is turned to compost, milk is purchased in reusable glass bottles and monthly menus are created around what vegetables are seasonally available to reduce carbon footprint.
But Jo decided more needs to be done so will be ditching single-use takeaway cups in favour of a cup loan scheme.
“Although we initially hoped to never have disposable cups, when setting up it was hard to know how it would be received and if it made business sense.
“Now we are well established and know what our customers want, we are excited to make the move.”
The Blonde Beet has been working on the switch for several months.
A chance conversation with a café customer from New Zealand resulted in them accessing funding to make the move to a returnable scheme.
Laura Cope from Use Your Own has worked with Jo from across the globe to source ethically produced cups and create a simple scheme for customers to use.
Customers now have three options – bring a cup of their own, put down a £3 deposit to loan one or buy a reusable cup from the café and receive a free coffee.
Working with reusable cup brand Circular and Co, The Blonde Beet will be the first UK independent business to use the newly designed returnable cups.
“We are so excited to finally get our scheme out there. We’ve worked hard to bring great quality, 100% recyclable, and ethically produced reusable cups to Stamford, which should make the sustainable choice even easier for everyone to take,” said Jo.
The Blonde Beet will be launching the scheme on Wednesday (May 3) with their single use cups being scrapped completely by the end of May.