Simply Salad Is Main The Cost In Eco-Pleasant Eating

As shoppers turn into more and more aware of the environmental affect of their selections, fast-casual eating chain Simply Salad has spearheaded a collection of essential initiatives to handle sustainability considerations head-on. The chain focuses on decreasing waste, sourcing responsibly and fostering neighborhood 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 just lately 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 advanced 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 attainable throughout the fast-casual class, with the purpose remodel the best way prospects work together with their meals and the surroundings.

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 in regards to the imaginative and prescient you had when founding the Simply Salad model, and the way it has advanced since. How has sustainability and social accountability been integral to the corporate’s mission?

Nick Kenner: Once I based Simply Salad in 2006, my imaginative and prescient was to create a restaurant idea that supplied great-tasting, reasonably priced, wholesome salad served in a extra earth-friendly manner. The purpose from the beginning was to ship greatness in each second: from offering flavorful meals with the very best stage of freshness, to setting a brand new customary for sustainability within the restaurant house and past.

Whereas our enterprise has grown immensely up to now seventeen years, our guiding mission to make on a regular basis well being and sustainability attainable 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 goal that guides our staff’s selections and actions.

We launched as a startup salad bar in Manhattan on a journey to make small adjustments that had a huge impact. 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 might have on individuals and the planet, and continued to search out new and modern methods to function as a accountable enterprise. Right now, our mission has expanded past stopping waste to a lot extra, culminating with our current B Corp Certification.

Marquis: Are you able to speak about a few of the packages and initiatives that Simply Salad has applied to turn into a accountable restaurant model? How are these distinctive from different competing ideas?

Kenner: Our purpose to revolutionize the zero-waste eating motion with modern sustainability options is mirrored in each side of the enterprise. Simply Salad is dwelling to the world’s largest restaurant reusable program, which has served tens of millions of consumers because the model’s founding in 2006. To incentivize sustainable consuming, company should purchase 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 another 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 affect of our menu right down to the merchandise stage. This carbon transparency permits company to grasp, and make ordering selections based mostly upon, the environmental affect of their meals selections. As a part of this effort, we proceed to develop 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 just a few.

Along with our signature Reusable Bowl Program, we’ve applied various insurance policies geared toward decreasing waste in all varieties 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 intently monitoring the information round these initiatives to measure their affect on our environmental footprint and determine 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 affect even additional.

Marquis: Simply Salad was a pioneer in carbon labeling. Are you able to inform me in regards to the resolution to calculate and current to shoppers emissions on the product stage, 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 important to vary this statistic. To attain this, larger transparency about meals’s position in local weather change is required to assist shoppers select decrease affect meals, and our staff 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 prospects with the clear info wanted to grasp the affect 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 prospects to climate-smart meals selections on our menus. Following the launch of our Climatarian filter, we noticed a virtually 10% enhance in gross sales of Climatarian menu objects.

As for challenges, the method of carbon labeling our menu was extraordinarily information intensive. Whereas it was enlightening to grasp our provide chain and elements in a complete new manner, this endeavor was additionally daunting as a result of sheer quantity of calculations concerned in bringing it to life. Our response was to staff up with an exterior companion, 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 prospects 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 shall be making it increasingly related to a bigger subset of consumers. Carbon literacy must be a minimum of 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 realize this purpose. Most just lately, we’ve been centered on the enlargement of our BringBack Program – a first-of-its-kind digital answer for single-use takeout packaging waste. As an extension of our in-store Reusable Bowl Program, BringBack permits prospects ordering through the Simply Salad cellular app to obtain their meal in a inexperienced returnable container, making reusables out there to the growing variety of prospects who order meals on-line. By providing reusable packaging for each on-line and in-store ordering, we now have elevated the accessibility, scale, and affect 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 relating to the pilot program in 2021, at which period we had been testing the bowls at simply two of our shops in NYC. As of this yr, BringBack is at present out there at ten Simply Salad places, and we’re actively trying to develop 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 prospects for making environmentally-conscious meals selections. By our efforts to advance our cellular app know-how and digitized buyer journey, we’re within the technique of growing a brand new rewards program designed to incentivize wholesome, climate-conscious meals selections. Sooner or later, we’ll look to reward and incentivize prospects to make extra sustainable purchases by way of this program, corresponding to providing rewards to company in alternate for ordering plant-based menu objects or salads from our Climatarian menu class.

Marquis: Simply Salad just lately acquired B Corp Certification. Are you able to inform us in regards to the journey in the 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 neighborhood of companies that meet excessive requirements of social and environmental efficiency, accountability, and transparency. Our staff is proud and honored to hitch the B Corp motion of leaders utilizing enterprise as a drive for good, and appears ahead to strengthening our ongoing dedication to social and environmental accountability.

To turn into a Licensed B Company, firms should endure a rigorous and intensive evaluation course of, administered by B Lab, to evaluate efficiency throughout 5 affect classes, together with staff, communities, prospects, suppliers, and the surroundings. Receiving this certification was a multi-year journey, requiring intensive ranges of teamwork throughout departments to gather information and intently look at each side of the best way we do enterprise.

B Corp Certification marks the optimistic affect 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 goal and overarching enterprise technique, together with our product, sustainability packages, worker relations and engagement with the bigger neighborhood. This certification is the start of a journey in the direction of ongoing enchancment, and as CEO, this achievement conjures up me to proceed discovering new methods to make a optimistic affect with our enterprise.

Marquis: The meals {industry} is a major contributor to environmental points. What affect do you hope Simply Salad’s B Corp Certification may have on the {industry} and the way do you intend to cleared the path for others to comply with?

Kenner: We’re hopeful that this certification will carry the restaurant {industry} collectively in constructive methods to scale back our collective environmental affect. We’d like extra meals firms on this neighborhood to make a strong, lasting distinction, and we’re optimistic that our certification will energize different restaurant manufacturers and meals firms which have come earlier than us to do enterprise in a manner that’s higher for our planet.

We proceed to steer by instance by way of pioneering a really round, waste-free solution to dine on-the-go and hope that different QSR ideas will comply with swimsuit with comparable initiatives. Our Reusable Bowl Applications show that closed loop packaging programs are possible to execute throughout the wider quick informal class, paving the best way for different chains to get rid of single-use plastic waste and alternatively undertake round options. In creating BringBack, we fully reimagined the web ordering expertise with the ideas of circularity, useful resource conservation, and zero-waste front-of-mind, and we pushed the boundaries of what’s attainable for restaurant apps. By introducing these industry-first packages, our purpose 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 house owners who want to make a optimistic affect by way of their operations? What steps ought to they take to start out this journey?

Kenner: My largest piece of recommendation to anybody contemplating B Corp Certification could be to contain all departments on the firm within the course of by way of a full possession strategy, moderately than assigning ESG efforts to at least one particular person or staff. B Corp is a multifaceted certification masking 5 affect classes, which have an effect on the whole thing of a corporation. As such, environmental and social objectives shouldn’t be the accountability of only one division, and all groups needs to be concerned in setting goals, executing them, and monitoring progress by way of 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 affect of the enterprise. By empowering your staff members to take possession, you may make sure that everyone seems to be working in the direction of the identical objectives and impressed to participate in a purpose-driven mission.