The best ingredients allow recipes to be simple and straightforward. The result is honest food, simply prepared. We want to eat food our great grandmothers would recognise.

Local is best but sunshine makes us smile. The best tasting, freshest food is local and seasonal. But we love the sunshine taste of Italy to help us feel good all through the seasons. We want to enjoy the shifts in the seasons and what they bring to our table. This also means less energy used in food production, transport and storage.

We buy from over 70 Scottish fresh food suppliers and about 20 Italian fresh food suppliers. The vast majority of our fresh ingredients do come from Scotland but that little bit of Italian sunshine boosts our immune systems and makes us feel good through the winter months and gives us great diversity through the rest of the year.

Food is one of life’s great pleasures. We want to enjoy food wholeheartedly and to celebrate the joys of eating and sharing good food. We live busy lives filled with different demands and pressures, so eating meals with those we love forces us to slow down and remember what is important.

‘Sustainability’ is a hugely complex idea but in terms of Happy Food, we are concerned for the well being of the natural world and the responsible use of resources. We are committed to using food produced in a responsible and sustainable way. We want everyone in the food chain to be treated well. Any produce in our business that comes from further afield is always done as sustainably as the extended food miles will allow. We recycle all of our glass, cardboard, paper, cooking oil. We’ll soon have all of our food waste collected and used for compost. All of our paper is from sustainable sources and we use low energy light bulbs!

Food connects people. We want to build community through food and establish a network of suppliers who are striving for environmental well being and delicious flavour. We especially want to celebrate small-scale producers and artisan production. We want to link taste and pleasure to the quest for a better food system here in Scotland. Making these connections helps us all to learn more about what we are eating and and to increase our understanding of the earth we live on and its seasons.