This last year has been unusual…to say the least. As we joyfully entered 2020, hoping and planning for another year of success as a family run and operated business, who could have imagined that we would be closing our doors, with no certainty of when they’d re-open, just three months later. Ah, March 2020 – a month that we’ll remember for a long time yet!

So, as we approached the anniversary of the start of Lockdown 1 and looked back over the year, it felt strange to say that there are some positives to take out of our experience of Covid-19 and all that it has entailed – and that sentiment isn’t (entirely) related to Lockdown hysteria!

Primarily, spending more time together as a family than we have in 8 and a half years has felt re-affirming – who else could we have spent Lockdown 1.0 and 2.0 with and maintained some level of sanity?! Additionally, who could have imagined that we would ever play a family game of Scrabble again after many years of not having enough time for such pursuits?!

Beyond that though, our time during Lockdown(s) has provided us some time to assess our business, the work that we have done, what we have achieved and, most importantly, given us time to consider what we would like to do next. And those discussions have been nothing short of intense, productive and, ultimately, filled with creative ideas that we will steadily implement over the next few months (and, some, years).

One of those has been our sustainability; a hot topic in the hospitality (and wider) industry over the last few years and one that we have touched upon in some manner in our work at the Dowans already BUT, there is room for more to be done. Over the next few blogs, we’ll take you through the following:

  1. What we’ve achieved so far;
  2. What we need to do next;
  3. What we will begin to implement immediately;
  4. What our long term plans are;
  5. Our sustainability policy in full.

We look forward to taking you on this journey with us – watch this space!