Low-impact raclette, from a horse trailer
Where Le Rac Shack stands on sustainability, and where it came from.
Where I am today
I no longer hold carbon-neutral certification, and I don't buy credits. I'd rather be plain about that than let an old badge do the talking.
What I do keep is the habit. Le Rac Shack is a small, one-person operation and I run it the way I'd want a caterer to run an event I was at:
- Very little food waste. I cook to the number of guests and the pace of the queue, not to a guess.
- Limited fossil-fuel use. Gas-fired grills, a household plug socket instead of a generator, and a trailer that arrives, serves and leaves.
- Considered choices. Palm-leaf trays and bowls, birch-wood cutlery and napkins, and Annecy raclette from 8kg wheels, which means less packaging per portion.
What changed, and why
For years I took the trailer to festivals. When I looked at it honestly, the model was the problem, not the cheese: whole wheels shipped in from the Alps, gas burning in fields every weekend, vans up and down the motorway, and big crews living on site, all to prepare thousands of portions I could only guess at.
So I stopped. After Glastonbury 2022 I closed the festival side and moved to private events only. Fewer miles, fewer one-off set-ups, and every wheel now goes to one event with a host at the centre of it. The biggest carbon decision I ever made was to stop chasing festivals.
A bit of history
By 2017 I was asking what a growing street food business was doing to the places it served, and I started measuring. From 2019 to 2022 Le Rac Shack was carbon neutral, which I believe made it the first street food trailer in the UK to be. That certification belonged to a different version of the business and it has ended. The full story is on the history page.
Why it matters to me
Away from the trailer, my career has been in carbon: since 2019 I've worked in carbon credit and carbon removal markets, helping companies work out what they can cut, what they can't, and what to do about the rest.
That has made me a bit allergic to big claims. So on this page you'll find what I actually do, what I used to do, and which is which.
If you run a similar business and are thinking about your own footprint, I'm happy to share what I learned, including the parts I didn't expect. Email leracshack@gmail.com.
Planning an event?
Tell me your date and I'll tell you how I'd keep it low impact.
