Gaucho restaurants are to open the first restaurant in Scotland to serve exclusively ‘Carbon Neutral Steaks’. Announced during COP 26, the upmarket restaurant group, unveil plans to open 'Scotland’s most sustainable steak restaurant' in central Glasgow ahead of Valentines Day 2022.
The 120-cover venue will serve Gaucho’s Argentine Beef, which offers beef from cattle which have enjoyed a life roaming in vast pastures at specially selected pampas farms.
The cattle graze on seventeen different types of grass from the Pampas provinces – with everything they eat being 100% natural. With the equivalent of four rugby pitches’ worth of space per cow, they enjoy a lush, free-range lifestyle in an area famed for its fertile soil.
Husbandry and welfare are paramount and regenerative farming techniques are used to reduce methane and greenhouse gasses at source, ensuring sequestration is the norm.
The carbon emissions in Gaucho’s Beef offering have been reduced at source, then calculated from field to fork at source before being offset through a reforestation programme in the Amazon with charity partner ‘Not For Sale’ who rescue victims from the threat of ‘modern-day slavery’ to plant trees for Gaucho. In turn producing a ‘Carbon Neutral’, truly guilt free steak offering.
The new venue announcement is aligned with a call to action from Gaucho CEO Martin Williams to fellow steak restaurateurs to join the ‘Sustainable Steak Movement’ which he has founded and launches at COP 26:
The movement, which is aligned with ‘Net Zero Now’ encourages steak restaurants to sign up to a manifesto which pledges that in 2022 the participating restaurants will offer a ‘Carbon Neutral’ Beef option on their menus, promote a ‘Carbon Neutral’ wine offering, commit to minimise food waste and the use of ‘green energy’ in their restaurants.
By 2025 the participating restaurants will offer an exclusively ‘Carbon Neutral’ Beef menu and in 2030 members will commit to become ‘Net Zero’ venues, using the ‘Zero Carbon Forum’ as a roadmap.
Rare Restaurants Founder and CEO Martin Williams announced, “Today we can announce the launch date and location of our second restaurant exclusively offering ‘Carbon Neutral Beef’.
'Alongside a menu of measures to make Gaucho the most sustainable steak restaurant in Scotland!” “Glasgow is the perfect location for our first new Gaucho restaurant since 2016 for many reasons, none less than it being the home city of COP26.
“I am delighted to announce our second ‘Carbon Free Beef restaurant’, all our future new openings will serve only carbon neutral beef and as of January 2022, all our 20 restaurants will boast a carbon neutral steak and wine offering which sits alongside our zero food waste and green energy policies.”
On the ‘Sustainable Steak Movement Williams said, ’“We created the Sustainable Steak Movement, to highlight steak restaurants whose beef offering comes from sustainable farms which have outstanding husbandry and animal welfare in their DNA and whom have reduced methane and greenhouse gasses at source, encouraged sequestration and committed to calculate and offset any carbon emissions.
“We must stop eating intensively reared, poor quality meats and support responsible restaurateurs committed to regenerative farming and providing an ethical, guilt-free beef offering on menus. I hope today’s launch will see many restaurant groups join us in this undertakng.”