Innovation Design, Ltd "SDGs management as a comprehensive weapon" goes cage free, and adopts Meat Free Monday

In response to ARCJ’s cage-free and egg-smart campaign calls, Innovation Design Ltd has declared cage-free, promising the future use of cage-free eggs at their three cafes operating in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

It was last year that the company, which was originally a consulting business for restaurants, started directly managing cafes in an attempt to give shape to their sentiment. The company’s representative, who has a long history of knowledge of the SDGs, became interested in the restaurant business because of the food loss issue. The beginning was in recycling and commercializing out-of-spec vegetables to be discarded as “ReFOOD”. Furthermore, at the end of 2019, they registered their three managed locations (kigi、haishop、KITCHEN MANE *1) with the “Sustainable Restaurant Association” *2, and started restaurant operation based on the SDGs concept.

The SDGs are 17 goals and 169 targets adopted at the United Nations Summit in 2015, and the number of companies that have these as their management philosophy is increasing even in Japan. In fact, we’ve come to see more and more business people in town with colorful SDGs badges on their suit chests, and it seems that few companies are now completely uninterested in SDGs. However, we can only say that there are still a limited number of leading companies in Japan that advocate so-called SDGs management, in which SDGs are incorporated into the organization and managed in the main business rather than as volunteer activities.

In Japanese society where there is a widespread shallow perception that SMEs are not related to the SDGs, Innovation Design, with a light footwork that large companies don’t have, has held study sessions many times and looking at the SDGs they have been training to explore businesses that create social value. As one aspect of this, they have registered all their managed cafes in the “Sustainable Restaurant Association”, and held a presentation meeting to decide how best to operate their 3 cafes in light of this association considering the global environment, human rights, and labor as check items when evaluating restaurants and cafes. The presentation was held as an event by closing all their locations, and one of the presenters was Manager Usui, who applied for the ARCJ Cage-Free & Egg-Smart Campaign this time around. And the research theme she was given by the company on this occasion was “cage free”.

Actually, Manager Usui had specialized in bridals until then, and had never paid attention to animal welfare before. So at best, she was thinking “cage-free eggs are expensive and probably delicious, right?”, and was shocked when she browsed ARCJ’s official website and learned about the truths of eggs and the realities of battery cages. In shock, when she asked the kitchen staff, “Do you know the difference between caged eggs and cage-free eggs?”, they knew the term “cage-free”, but didn’t know why currently kitchens around the world are shifting from battery cages to cage-free reared eggs.

Having researched about cage free, Manager Usui thought that this presentation was not just a presentation, but a very meaningful opportunity to reach the hearts of each and every employee. However, she was also wondering if it would be okay to show her mates the horrifying photos and the terrible realities. So she decided to use a lot of pictures of hens being reared freely on cage-free farms, but decided that she couldn’t help but also tell the horrifying reality of the chickens trapped in battery cages. Then she made a presentation and asked all employees to take a closer look at the painful photos and videos provided by ARCJ. During that time, the room apparently calmed down. As a result, the company decided that the restaurant management policy in the future will be cage free, saying that Manager Usui’s presentation was the best, and led to the declaration at this time.

By the way, one of the reasons it’s difficult to recognize the actual conditions of livestock animals in Japan is that people who know the reality put a kind of brake on their hearts and hesitate to let others know. The fear that the other person will be hurt if I tell them that “the eggs you are eating are actually produced so cruelly”. Not showing or telling the truth because you feel sorry for the other person is actually not kindness but indifference to the other person, and even cruel. If you think that livestock animals are food and sustenance for your loved ones and friends, please tell them the truth. Then, after knowing it, ask them to think about what to do.

Innovation Design seems to have used a significant amount of eggs on a daily basis, but was able to make a cage-free decision immediately without being bound by past cost calculations. It may be the result of the idea of SDGs permeating the company to solve the problem by “back calculation from the future that should be”. We’d like people and companies that freeze thinking they can never change the current situations even though there should be no one who thinks that the suffering of hens can be left as it is, to adopt SDGs thinking and decide on their behaviors from this year 2020, when all common sense has been overturned. Now is the time to shed light from the future on the closed present.

During this COVID-19 period, when the shift to cage free had been decided, Innovation Design’s progress did not stop. The company has established a sustainable design group. Indeed all employees are the members. Everyone has the title of a sustainable designer, and it seems that the axis of judgment of all the efforts that the company will make in the future will be decided by “whether it will benefit the earth”. And one of the decisions is the start of “Meat Free Monday” at the three cafes they manage. The kitchen staff must be having a hard time with the start of Meat Free Monday in addition to cage free, but during this COVID-19 period when they had to close or shorten the business hours due to their tenants, the managers had the opportunity to charge their energy. For Innovation Design, October 2020 is the real restart and a new start. In reality, restaurants and cafes that have both cage free and Meat Free Monday as their management pillars are rare in Japan, and it seems that the sustainable design that this company creates will be at the forefront of this era for a while.