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 environment  

1/ We appreciate where our food comes from and how it should be used to its fullest, ensuring that where possible it reflects the season. This informs such ideas as our ‘Nose To Tail’ events, our ‘Home-grown supper club’ and our ‘full cycle hot composting’ initiative where we grow our vegetables in compost created from old waste products. 

We execute dozens of initiatives to reduce our food waste, as we know so much is simply just too good to go. Our food waste is weighed and recorded by our bin collection service at each venue, helping us reduce our wastage and lessen our impact on the environment... we even recycle our unsold croissants into a stunning croissant bread & butter pudding.  

2/ We always use rapeseed oil in our cooking, which is not genetically modified and soy free. We believe this is better for the environment and better for our customers.  

3/ We do our best to source our ingredients as locally as possible, whether that’s our Priors Hall Farm pork or Peter Loose’s Brancaster mussels. It might be Tim Allen’s Norfolk T-bone pork steaks or mutton chops from the Sandringham estate; Bedlam farm broccoli; Norfolk peer potatoes; cheese from Walsingham or Bungay; salad from Blakeney or even from our own polytunnel at Redcoats Farmhouse; Knebworth estate venison; Cromer crab or brown shrimp potted at King’s Lynn; whatever it is, wherever it is from, it will be excellent and be sourced with sustainability in mind, with as few miles as possible in the mix. It is because of this unswerving commitment to sustainability that we were awarded a maximum 3* Food Made Good Award by the Sustainable Restaurant Association.  

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.  

1/ 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.  

2/ 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.  

3/ 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.   

1/ 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. 

2/ 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.  

3/ 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.