itsu restaurants

Since 1997 when we opened our first store in Chelsea, itsu has always strived to provide beautiful food to its customers that is delicious, healthy and most importantly, ethically sourced. We work with a diverse and far reaching supply chain, and this gives us the flexibility to react to the ever-changing demands of our customers, the market we operate in and allows us to provide our customers with the most beautiful Asian-inspired eating experience possible. People are fundamental to the way we operate as a business and our success couldn’t be achieved without the teams working in our shops through to the suppliers producing our raw materials. Upholding their human rights is an essential part of our operation. We know that as a growing business the challenges of modern slavery are complex and can affect all businesses big and small. We are committed and passionate about the eradication of unacceptable and unethical practices and we are working tirelessly to ensure that this is a cornerstone of our business and underpins the way we do business. This statement has been published in accordance with Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Our Business and Supply Chain

We work with suppliers of all sizes to source over 180 ingredients, from small farms in the UK to multinational operators. We also strive to ensure that our fresh products such as chicken, fish and fresh produce are sourced from within the UK when possible. Due to seasonality and macro-impacts on availability, this is not always possible. itsu has developed a strong and longstanding relationship with a number of suppliers that have been on the journey with us from our very first store in 1997, right through to the 70+ shops we now operate from. These suppliers are highly trusted and our business wouldn’t be achieving such success without them. New suppliers are also encouraged to develop a strong sense of partnership with itsu and this is done through mutual trust and respect. Ensuring the integrity of this supply chain is vital to our business and we are constantly working on ways to prevent, identify and react to the risks of modern slavery.

Policies

As a growing business, we are in the process of reviewing our policies in order to make sure that our suppliers understand our expectations with regards to human rights across all areas of our supply chain. Our internal itsu operational HR policies are robust and readily available to all staff and form part of the itsu induction conducted at our dedicated Academy based in London. itsu actively encourages employees to report any activity that they believe is in breach of company standards, and a 24-hour confidential helpline is available to report any issues.

Due Diligence & Identification of risk

itsu is fortunate to work with several suppliers that are the leading manufacturers within their product categories. Many of these suppliers already have robust Due Diligence measures in place. As part of the ongoing improvement to all itsu’s policies and standards, we are ensuring that we have a more comprehensive approach to risk assessment and identification of risk. We visit all food suppliers within our supply chain to assess them from a food safety perspective, but also an ethical standpoint to ensure they are a suitable partner for itsu. Given our trading & supply chain geography, we are committed to understanding all aspects of these often-complex supply chains. Any suppliers that do not meet our high standards are removed from our supplier portfolio and not revisited until we feel confident that they meet our high expectations of a supplier to itsu.

Next Steps [to ensure we remain ahead]

itsu is committed not only to creating beautiful food but also that we do business in a beautifully responsible way. We will ensure that we have the correct, suitable and robust policies in place to reduce the risks of modern slavery in our supply chain and operations. Our key next steps to tackle and minimise risk are as follows; 1. Review our current ethical trading policies and update accordingly. 2. Review and risk assess our operation and supply chains and review these on a regular basis. 3. Ensure that all new suppliers into the itsu supply chain meet our minimum ethical expectations. 4. Further invest in training for our Senior Leaders and all relevant head-office and store colleagues. 5. Roll out a new quality assurance framework across to ensure ethical standards are adhered to across our stores, our partner run stores and global supply chain. 6. Engaging with like-minded, best-in-class operators in our sector and other industries to share and learn best practice across all ethical trading standards. This statement was prepared by the itsu modern slavery working group and approved by our Executive Senior Management team and Founder.

itsu [grocery]

itsu [grocery] ltd recognises and understands the responsibility that all businesses have to drive improvements in human rights and to prevent and mitigate the risks of modern slavery.  itsu [grocery] is committed to ensuring we are doing everything possible to eliminate modern slavery risks and are working collaboratively with our suppliers to ensure they support us on this journey. This statement has been published in accordance with Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and CORE Coalition. The following statement outlines the way we work with suppliers, train, support and educate our team and measure impact to help eliminate modern slavery. We are aware that there is always more that can be done. The final paragraph outlines ways in which we hope to make ongoing improvements year on year.                                                                          

1. Organisational Structure and Supply Chains

At itsu [grocery], we take pride in sourcing the best products and services from suppliers around the world in a socially and environmentally responsible way. Ensuring the integrity of our supply chains is vital to our business. We are constantly working on ways to prevent, identify, and react to the risks of modern slavery.

itsu [grocery] work with an extensive and diverse range of suppliers spanning multiple continents. We have created strong working relationships with our suppliers’ following years of working collaboratively together.

As an agent and broker, we do not own any physical operations, however we maintain full traceability of the supply chain through requiring all our food manufacturing, packaging and storage & distribution suppliers to be members of Sedex (see section 4), abide by local laws, and act in accordance with our Supplier Human Rights Policy.

We also expect high standards from our service suppliers and therefore work only with credible and reputable companies.

2. Governance Structure and Strategy for Modern Slavery

Our commitment to responsible sourcing starts with the itsu [grocery] team, ensuring they have the relevant training and support to drive adherence to our Supplier Human Rights Policy within our supply chain.

The Management Team is ultimately accountable for human rights practices within our business and supply chain. The Head of Procurement and Senior Sustainability Advisor work to embed skills, knowledge, and processes across the business.

All relevant teams receive training on Modern Slavery when they start employment and on an annual basis (see Training section 7 below).

3. Policies in relation to slavery and human trafficking

itsu [grocery] has developed a Supplier Human Rights Policy to outline our expectation for suppliers on human rights. This is based on the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) Base Code which is itself founded on the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and is an internationally recognised code of labour practice. It contains a specific requirement for suppliers to identify and tackle cases of modern slavery and applies to food manufacturing sites, food co-packing sites, storage and distribution providers, and packaging suppliers.

All suppliers are sent the itsu [grocery] Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) handbook, which contains our Supplier Human Rights Policy, to be signed by 2 members of their team, including one member of senior management.

itsu [grocery] also has internal policies which apply to our employees in head office, including the Whistle-Blowing Procedure, Diversity and Inclusion Policy, Employee Code of Conduct, Disciplinary Policy, Grievance Policy, and Reporting Wrongdoing Policy. Additionally, we have 4 trained mental health first aiders who are available to support any employees within the business. itsu [grocery] are a proud supporter of Grocery Aid, who support colleagues working in any area of the food industry, with emotional, practical support and financial advice. Information and contact details for Grocery Aid are offered to all itsu [grocery] employees from the first day of their employment.

4. Assessment of Modern Slavery Risk Within Our Supply Chain

itsu [grocery] uses the results of the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex), Self-Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs) completed by suppliers, and the Sedex Radar Risk Assessment tool to undertake risk assessments of our supply base. itsu [grocery] uses Sedex Advance to manage our supplier’s responsible sourcing information, which enables our suppliers to share their information in a consistent and confidential way. The use of the Sedex Radar Risk Assessment allows more targeted actions to be taken to manage risk. Additionally, the Senior Sustainability Advisor creates a quarterly report with audit updates and an overview of any new suppliers that have been linked with the business in the previous quarter. This is shared with relevant members of the team.

To minimise risk of Modern Slavery further, we ensure that no products or ingredients are sourced from Xinjiang, China.

5. Due Diligence process

We have a number of processes in place to help assess and maintain our ethical standards; including using Sedex, SMETA audits, SMETA escalation plan, technical audit standards and our Responsible Sourcing Risk Matrix.

itsu group is an AB member of Sedex, which means we have visibility of sustainability performance in our business and supply chain and are part of a global network of like-minded leaders in ESG.

itsu [grocery] requires all food and packaging manufacturers, co-packers, and storage and distribution suppliers to be members of Sedex. All suppliers must review their SAQ’s annually to ensure responsible sourcing data is up to date. Any high-risk suppliers are required to have a third-party unannounced Sedex Members’ Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) every 3 years. SMETA audits are conducted by qualified, approved auditors and the audit covers a site’s labour and health and safety policies, as well as environmental performance, ethics, and policies.

In 2025, we have been using our SMETA escalation plan, which was introduced in Q4 of 2024. This has helped us to ensure that we are reviewing and supporting our suppliers through their audits and through the implementation of any potential corrective actions. Using this, we have seen improvement in non-compliance close out times and increased collaboration with suppliers on corrective action plans.

itsu [grocery] conducts regular supplier visits. The purpose of these visits includes initial introductory visits, relationship building, food safety audits, first production, and trials to understand the operations of the supplier.

Our Senior Sustainability Advisor is qualified as SGS Social Systems Auditor/Lead Auditor.

Our Technical Audit Standard now includes as default a set of human rights questions updated in 2025. This was trained out to our technical team and is now being used in food safety audits to help us gain further transparency.

We aim to work in partnership with our suppliers to deliver on our responsible sourcing commitments. We encourage them to be open and transparent about their risks, challenges, and issues so we can provide support and guidance where needed.

In 2025, we used Sedex Radar to identify the raw materials with reported risks around human rights and deforestation. We then created a Responsible Sourcing Risk matrix, to calculate the probability and severity of a risk occurring based on a number of variables, such as, production volume from at risk countries of origin, the annual volume purchased by itsu [grocery], as well as internal and external brand scores. This is to ensure constant and full due diligence on the sourcing of our raw materials and to implement changes to our Responsible Sourcing Policy where required.

6. KPIs to measure effectiveness of steps being taken

In January 2025, we set 5 KPIs to monitor and improve our approach to addressing Modern Slavery within our business. The below section outlines these KPIs and progress made in 2025:

1. To ensure all new suppliers are registered on Sedex and complete their SAQ before launch of the product to ensure that 100% of suppliers are on Sedex. 

 

100% of suppliers are on Sedex and have completed their SAQ.

2. To hold an annual itsu [grocery] webinar to update suppliers on ESG standards, including human rights. 

 

Our annual supplier webinar took place on 28th August 2025. We had 69 attendees from 33 different suppliers. This included a training session on the ETI base code and a deep dive into the requirements of the clauses: working hours are not excessive and living wages are paid. We also did an overview of our SMETA audit escalation plan and our Sedex requirements. All suppliers who could not attend received the webinar slides.

3. Senior Sustainability Advisor to complete visits to high-risk suppliers to complete an internal human rights audit. 

 

In 2025, due to time constraints third party audits were used to review our high-risk suppliers. However, in 2026, a full plan is in place for our Sustainability advisor to visit high risk suppliers.

4. Widen our scope to include our service suppliers in our annual training webinars and Sedex requirements. 

 

In 2025, we began to build a strategy around which service suppliers should be considered in scope. By 2026, we will have identified the service suppliers that are in scope and included them in the training.

5. To implement the SMETA audit escalation plan across all audits that are completed by suppliers in 2025.

 

In 2025, our SMETA audit escalation plan was applied to all 19 of the SMETA audits completed by our suppliers.

We will use the following Key Performance Indicators in 2026 to measure the effectiveness of our approach to modern slavery:

By January 2027:

• 100% of new suppliers to be registered on Sedex with a complete SAQ before new products from each supplier are live in the market.
• Senior Sustainability Advisor to complete an internal human rights audit for high-risk suppliers.
• itsu [grocery] to host an annual webinar to update suppliers on ESG topics, including human rights.
• itsu [grocery] to identify the service suppliers that are in scope of the Human Rights Policy and include them in the requirements.
• itsu [grocery] to work closely with suppliers to see demonstrable improvements to areas identified by the SMETA audits as “Collaborative Action Required”.

 

7. Training on modern slavery and trafficking

We recognise the importance of training, both our internal teams and our suppliers, to ensure that they can identify human rights risks and have the tools to act if any concerns are raised.

In August 2025 we hosted our third annual webinar for all suppliers and did refresher training on the ETI Base Code.

itsu [grocery] also ran an internal training course on our Responsible Sourcing risk assessment for all the members of our teams who are involved directly in working with suppliers on developing new products. It was focused on the specific human rights and deforestation risk mitigation strategies for our 7 high risk raw materials which were identified through our risk assessment.

All employees are trained on our Modern Slavery Statement annually. For any new employees to the business, Modern Slavery Statement Training is included in our Sustainability introduction which is delivered within 6 weeks of starting.

8. Effective action taken to address modern slavery

All itsu [grocery] employees are encouraged to speak up if they are aware of wrongdoing. The processes for this are laid out in our Grievance Policy and Reporting Wrongdoing Policy. itsu [grocery] is committed to ensuring that there are multiple channels for employees to confidentially raise concerns with the knowledge that effective systems are in place for investigation and resolution.

itsu [grocery] has a dedicated phone number and email address for suppliers to report any human rights malpractice that may occur. Any information will be treated confidentially and promptly investigated. We have had no cases of forced labour or child labour raised through the whistleblowing procedure in 2025.

9. Next steps

We are aware that our work is not yet done, and we strive to keep making improvements year on year.

In the long term, we aim to:

• Require human rights validation for all suppliers of goods including but not limited to SMETA audits. 
• Extend our human rights policy to include indirect key raw material suppliers. 
• Collaborate with other food businesses and organisations to improve labour standards in food supply chains. 

This statement was approved by the itsu [grocery] management team.

Signed by: