Sustainability Spotlight | Roly's Fudge
Roly’s Fudge began making traditional fudge in small batches by hand back in 1987, with a 100 year old recipe which came from the founder’s grandmother.
Fudge making began in the founder’s cottage in mid Devon in a copper cauldron bought in an antiques centre. The've always believed in keeping things simple and natural, with locally sourced ingredients wherever possible, no artificial colourings, additives or ultra processed substitutes. Every batch is still stirred in copper pans and poured onto marble tables by the family of 40 independent fudge makers across the country, in a process that takes two hours per batch.
The first Roly's Fudge shop opened in Torquay in 1987, and in 2027 the business will celebrate a remarkable 40 year anniversary. We asked Dannee McGuire of Roly's Fudge to tell us how she and her team create such wonderful fudge, sustainably.
What have you done to make your business more sustainable?
Zero food waste has been at the root of our business since 1987. Every batch is handmade in small quantities, so we only produce what we know our customers will enjoy.
Batches naturally produce crumbs, and sometimes we work the crumbs back into the next batch of fudge.
One of our main initiatives these days, especially when we have mixed flavours, is that the crumbs from our fudge batches are collected and sold as our signature Fudge Crumbs. These are popular with customers in a range of baking projects, from cheesecakes to topping on ice creams. We are looking to separate these into Vanilla and Sea Salt too.
What would you like to change to improve your sustainability credentials further?
This year, one of our packaging suppliers has introduced new plastic bags which come integrated with a plastic bottom, rather than cardboard.
What this means is it’s not a mixed material, it’s single material, which means it can go into the same recycling stream – making it fully recyclable. It allows us to avoid mixed-material packaging that is harder for local distributors to recycle.
We’re hoping over the next year we can bring all Roly’s Fudge Pantries onto this upgraded packaging so we can offer a consistent, more sustainable product nationwide.
We also would like to continue to encourage customers to bring in their own refillable containers so they don’t even need to use our counter bags.
What are your tips for other businesses that want to become more sustainable?
We encourage our suppliers regularly to use the best supply lines – whether that’s sustainably sourced paper or new technologies in plastics allowing it to be more recyclable. When they can’t, we work to transition to other suppliers. We communicate with our suppliers regularly about what we’re looking for.
Look at every element of sustainability and what you can do from the ground up. We use the UN Sustainability Goals to guide us and to think about the wider picture, whether that’s food waste, food miles, supporting local producers, our local communities and charities, or packaging.
