As shoppers change into more and more aware of the environmental influence of their selections, fast-casual eating chain Just Salad has spearheaded a collection of essential initiatives to handle sustainability considerations head-on. The chain focuses on decreasing waste, sourcing responsibly and fostering group engagement. And as I reported in a earlier Forbes article, the model supplies carbon labelling for its merchandise in addition to a “climatarian” menu that identifies which of its salads and different choices are higher for the planet.
I not too long ago sat down with Simply Salad’s Founder and CEO, Nick Kenner to uncover the story behind the model’s sustainability journey. He instructed me how through the years, the manufacturers dedication to sustainability has developed and grown, reflecting a real dedication to the planet. He additionally mentioned how on the core of Simply Salad’s mission is a relentless pursuit of modern options that push the boundaries of what’s doable throughout the fast-casual class, with the objective remodel the way in which clients work together with their meals and the setting.
Kenner additionally shares insights into the methods, challenges and successes which have formed Simply Salad’s current path to turning into a Licensed B Company, in addition to the corporate’s forward-looking imaginative and prescient for steady enchancment. Please learn beneath for extra from our dialog.
Christopher Marquis: Are you able to please inform me concerning the imaginative and prescient you had when founding the Simply Salad model, and the way it has developed since. How has sustainability and social accountability been integral to the corporate’s mission?
Nick Kenner: After I based Simply Salad in 2006, my imaginative and prescient was to create a restaurant idea that provided great-tasting, inexpensive, wholesome salad served in a extra earth-friendly approach. The objective from the beginning was to ship greatness in each second: from offering flavorful meals with the very best degree of freshness, to setting a brand new commonplace for sustainability within the restaurant house and past.
Whereas our enterprise has grown immensely previously seventeen years, our guiding mission to make on a regular basis well being and sustainability doable has remained the identical. Since opening the doorways to our first restaurant in New York Metropolis, our dedication to sustainability and social accountability has continued to be a core a part of our objective that guides our group’s choices and actions.
We launched as a startup salad bar in Manhattan on a journey to make small modifications that had a big effect. Our first step was introducing our Reusable Bowl Program on day one – the center of the model, and probably the most distinctive sustainable restaurant ideas within the {industry} – which Simply Salad nonetheless makes use of throughout all shops thus far. As we grew, we acknowledged the affect our group may have on individuals and the planet, and continued to seek out new and modern methods to function as a accountable enterprise. Immediately, our mission has expanded past stopping waste to a lot extra, culminating with our current B Corp Certification.
Marquis: Are you able to discuss a few of the packages and initiatives that Simply Salad has applied to change into a accountable restaurant model? How are these distinctive from different competing ideas?
Kenner: Our objective to revolutionize the zero-waste eating motion with modern sustainability options is mirrored in each facet of the enterprise. Simply Salad is dwelling to the world’s largest restaurant reusable program, which has served thousands and thousands of consumers for the reason that model’s founding in 2006. To incentivize sustainable consuming, visitors can buy a reusable bowl at any Simply Salad retailer for simply $1 and obtain a free salad topping with each reuse – an idea in contrast to every other within the restaurant {industry}.
Simply Salad was moreover the primary U.S. restaurant chain to carbon label its menu and supply a Climatarian menu class, quantifying the environmental influence of our menu all the way down to the merchandise degree. This carbon transparency permits visitors to grasp, and make ordering choices primarily based upon, the environmental influence of their meals selections. As a part of this effort, we proceed to increase our repertoire of local weather aware ingredient choices – we provide a completely vegan smoothie menu, plant-based proteins like Past Rooster, and Violife Creamy Vegan Feta Cheese, to call a couple of.
Along with our signature Reusable Bowl Program, we’ve applied quite a lot of insurance policies geared toward decreasing waste in all kinds throughout our shops. Notably, our partnership with meals surplus app, Too Good To Go permits us to save lots of hundreds of meals from going to waste.
We’re carefully monitoring the information round these initiatives to measure their influence on our environmental footprint and establish alternatives for additional enchancment. In alignment with the excessive requirements set by B Corp, these efforts are only the start of a journey to decreasing our influence even additional.
Marquis: Simply Salad was a pioneer in carbon labeling. Are you able to inform me concerning the determination to calculate and current to shoppers emissions on the product degree, and the challenges Simply Salad encountered?
Kenner: Meals manufacturing makes up greater than one-quarter of worldwide greenhouse gasoline emissions, and shifting to extra sustainable, plant-based meals selections is critical to vary this statistic. To realize this, higher transparency about meals’s position in local weather change is required to assist shoppers select decrease influence meals, and our group determined to play a component in creating an answer.
Our signature innovation is the carbon label and a corresponding “Climatarian” menu. We label our menu objects with their carbon footprint, which empowers clients with the clear info wanted to grasp the influence of their meal: the decrease the quantity, the much less the merchandise contributes to local weather change. Simply Salad makes use of these carbon labels to assist information clients to climate-smart meals selections on our menus. Following the launch of our Climatarian filter, we noticed an almost 10% enhance in gross sales of Climatarian menu objects.
As for challenges, the method of carbon labeling our menu was extraordinarily knowledge intensive. Whereas it was enlightening to grasp our provide chain and components in a complete new approach, this endeavor was additionally daunting because of the sheer quantity of calculations concerned in bringing it to life. Our response was to group up with an exterior accomplice, Planet FWD – a woman-owned, main carbon administration platform – to offer third-party verified emissions calculations. To calculate our carbon labels, Planet FWD traces the cradle-to-grave emissions of each ingredient inside a menu merchandise and the packaging it’s served in. Other than serving to clients make climate-smart meals selections, our carbon labels assist us, as an organization, make culinary and sustainability enhancements collectively.
Going ahead, the problem of carbon labeling might be making it increasingly more related to a bigger subset of consumers. Carbon literacy must be at the very least as excessive as dietary literacy in order that labels have the supposed impact of serving to individuals make planet-aligned selections.
Marquis: Are there any new initiatives or applied sciences Simply Salad is exploring to scale back its environmental footprint even additional? How do you see the corporate’s sustainability efforts evolving sooner or later?
Kenner: As an organization dedicated to decreasing our environmental footprint, we’re continuously exploring new alternatives to attain this objective. Most not too long ago, we’ve been centered on the growth of our BringBack Program – a first-of-its-kind digital resolution for single-use takeout packaging waste. As an extension of our in-store Reusable Bowl Program, BringBack permits clients ordering through the Simply Salad cell app to obtain their meal in a inexperienced returnable container, making reusables out there to the growing variety of clients who order meals on-line. By providing reusable packaging for each on-line and in-store ordering, we’ve got elevated the accessibility, scale, and influence of our reusables packages.
We’ve made notable progress in constructing and advancing this initiative because you final spoke with our Chief Sustainability Officer, Sandra Noonan concerning the pilot program in 2021, at which period we have been testing the bowls at simply two of our shops in NYC. As of this 12 months, BringBack is at the moment out there at ten Simply Salad areas, and we’re actively seeking to increase this system to much more shops and markets shifting ahead.
Our subsequent frontier is the intersection of loyalty and sustainability, as we purpose to reward clients for making environmentally-conscious meals selections. Via our efforts to advance our cell app expertise and digitized buyer journey, we’re within the means of creating a brand new rewards program designed to incentivize wholesome, climate-conscious meals selections. Sooner or later, we are going to look to reward and incentivize clients to make extra sustainable purchases via this program, equivalent to providing rewards to visitors in trade for ordering plant-based menu objects or salads from our Climatarian menu class.
Marquis: Simply Salad not too long ago acquired B Corp Certification. Are you able to inform us concerning the journey in direction of this achievement and what it means for the corporate?
Kenner: As a B Corp, Simply Salad is now a part of a worldwide group of companies that meet excessive requirements of social and environmental efficiency, accountability, and transparency. Our group is proud and honored to hitch the B Corp motion of leaders utilizing enterprise as a power for good, and appears ahead to strengthening our ongoing dedication to social and environmental accountability.
To change into a Licensed B Company, corporations should endure a rigorous and intensive evaluation course of, administered by B Lab, to evaluate efficiency throughout 5 influence classes, together with staff, communities, clients, suppliers, and the setting. Receiving this certification was a multi-year journey, requiring intensive ranges of teamwork throughout departments to gather knowledge and carefully study each facet of the way in which we do enterprise.
B Corp Certification marks the optimistic influence that Simply Salad has made within the communities it serves by specializing in individuals and the planet since our founding in 2006. The requirements set by the B Corp motion will stay on the forefront of our objective and overarching enterprise technique, together with our product, sustainability packages, worker relations and engagement with the bigger group. This certification is the start of a journey in direction of ongoing enchancment, and as CEO, this achievement conjures up me to proceed discovering new methods to make a optimistic influence with our enterprise.
Marquis: The meals {industry} is a big contributor to environmental points. What influence do you hope Simply Salad’s B Corp Certification may have on the {industry} and the way do you intend to paved the way for others to observe?
Kenner: We’re hopeful that this certification will convey the restaurant {industry} collectively in constructive methods to scale back our collective environmental influence. We’d like extra meals corporations on this group to make a robust, lasting distinction, and we’re optimistic that our certification will energize different restaurant manufacturers and meals corporations which have come earlier than us to do enterprise in a approach that’s higher for our planet.
We proceed to guide by instance via pioneering a really round, waste-free option to dine on-the-go and hope that different QSR ideas will observe swimsuit with comparable initiatives. Our Reusable Bowl Packages display that closed loop packaging methods are possible to execute throughout the wider quick informal class, paving the way in which for different chains to remove single-use plastic waste and alternatively undertake round options. In creating BringBack, we fully reimagined the web ordering expertise with the rules of circularity, useful resource conservation, and zero-waste front-of-mind, and we pushed the boundaries of what’s doable for restaurant apps. By introducing these industry-first packages, our objective is to speed up the transition to reusable, zero-waste packaging throughout the fast-casual restaurant class.
Marquis: What recommendation would you give to different enterprise homeowners who want to make a optimistic influence via their operations? What steps ought to they take to begin this journey?
Kenner: My greatest piece of recommendation to anybody contemplating B Corp Certification could be to contain all departments on the firm within the course of via a full possession method, slightly than assigning ESG efforts to at least one particular person or group. B Corp is a multifaceted certification masking 5 influence classes, which have an effect on everything of a company. As such, environmental and social objectives shouldn’t be the accountability of only one division, and all groups needs to be concerned in setting targets, executing them, and monitoring progress via measurable KPIs and efficiency metrics.
It’s essential to instill a tradition of possession. Every worker ought to really feel accountable for the environmental and social influence of the enterprise. By empowering your group members to take possession, you may be certain that everyone seems to be working in direction of the identical objectives and impressed to participate in a purpose-driven mission.