EGalim in Practice: How to Reach 50% Sustainable Products in Catering

What EGalim Actually Requires — and Why It Is Harder Than It Looks

France’s EGalim law (reinforced by EGalim 2 in 2021) requires collective catering operators to source at least 50% of their food purchases by value from sustainable or high-quality products. Within that 50%, a minimum of 20% must be certified organic.

On paper, the rule is straightforward. In practice, kitchens feeding hundreds or thousands of people every day face a real challenge: procurement decisions, recipe formulation, and supplier relationships all need to evolve together — and everything needs to be documented.

The compliance gap is not usually a lack of willingness. It is a lack of visibility.

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The Three Gaps Most Operations Need to Close

1. Purchasing Data Is Scattered

In many facilities, procurement data lives in one system (or a spreadsheet), recipes in another, and production planning somewhere else entirely. Without a connected view, it is nearly impossible to calculate your sustainable-spend percentage in real time — let alone act on it before the end of the quarter.

2. Recipes Are Not Linked to Sourcing Criteria

Knowing that a product is organic or Label Rouge is only useful if that information travels all the way through to recipe cost calculations and menu planning. Most traditional setups break that link early.

3. Reporting Takes Too Long

The EGalim framework requires that operators be able to demonstrate compliance, not just claim it. Annual reporting to local authorities means pulling together purchase values, product certifications, and category breakdowns — a process that can take weeks without the right tools.

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How a Connected F&B Management Platform Closes the Gap

This is where purpose-built software like CalcMenu makes a measurable difference.

Ingredient-level certification tracking means you can tag each product with its EGalim qualification — organic, fair trade, Label Rouge, sustainable fishing certification, and so on — directly in the ingredient library. That data then flows automatically into every recipe that uses the ingredient.

Real-time sustainable-spend dashboards let purchasing managers see exactly where they stand against the 50% target at any point in the year, broken down by category, site, or supplier. No more end-of-year scrambles.

Multi-site production management is critical for large operators — hospital groups, care home networks, airline catering — where purchasing is centralised but production happens across dozens of locations. CalcMenu handles this natively, keeping compliance data consistent across every site.

Recipe reformulation support helps chefs identify which dishes are pulling the sustainable-spend percentage down and suggests practical substitutions — swapping a conventional ingredient for a certified equivalent without compromising nutritional balance or dietary profiles.

Finally, label printing and traceability (including NiceLabel integration and electronic shelf labels) ensure that EGalim-qualifying ingredients are clearly identified at every stage of production, supporting both internal audits and regulatory reporting.

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Making Progress Without Disrupting Operations

A realistic path to 50% does not happen overnight. The most successful operations take an incremental approach:

• Audit your current baseline using actual purchase data, not estimates.
• Identify your highest-volume ingredient categories — these offer the biggest leverage for moving the percentage.
• Prioritise supplier conversations around products where certified alternatives exist at comparable cost.
• Use your software to model the impact of each substitution before committing.

Compliance becomes manageable when it is built into your daily workflow rather than treated as a separate reporting exercise.

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Ready to See Where You Stand?

If you are working toward EGalim compliance and want to understand how CalcMenu can give you the visibility and control you need, book a free 15-minute call with our team. We will walk through your specific setup and show you exactly how the platform supports sustainable sourcing tracking, multi-site reporting, and everything in between.