As shoppers change into more and more acutely aware of the environmental influence of their decisions, fast-casual eating chain Simply Salad has spearheaded a collection of necessary initiatives to deal with sustainability considerations head-on. The chain focuses on lowering 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 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 inside the fast-casual class, with the purpose rework the way in which prospects work together with their meals and the atmosphere.

Kenner additionally shares insights into the methods, challenges and successes which have formed Simply Salad’s latest path to turning into a Licensed B Company, in addition to the corporate’s forward-looking imaginative and prescient for steady enchancment. Please learn under 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 duty 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 supplied great-tasting, inexpensive, 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 best degree of freshness, to setting a brand new customary for sustainability within the restaurant area 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 doable has remained the identical. Since opening the doorways to our first restaurant in New York Metropolis, our dedication to sustainability and social duty has continued to be a core a part of our function that guides our crew’s choices 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 guts of the model, and probably the most distinctive sustainable restaurant ideas within the {industry} – which Simply Salad nonetheless makes use of throughout all shops so far. As we grew, we acknowledged the affect our group may have on folks and the planet, and continued to seek out new and modern methods to function as a accountable enterprise. At the moment, our mission has expanded past stopping waste to a lot extra, culminating with our latest B Corp Certification.

Marquis: Are you able to speak about among 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 purpose to revolutionize the zero-waste eating motion with modern sustainability options is mirrored in each facet of the enterprise. Simply Salad is house to the world’s largest restaurant reusable program, which has served tens of millions of consumers for the reason that model’s founding in 2006. To incentivize sustainable consuming, visitors 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 influence of our menu right down to the merchandise degree. This carbon transparency permits visitors to grasp, and make ordering choices based mostly upon, the environmental influence of their meals decisions. As a part of this effort, we proceed to develop our repertoire of local weather acutely aware ingredient choices – we provide a wholly vegan smoothie menu, plant-based proteins like Past Hen, and Violife Creamy Vegan Feta Cheese, to call just a few.

Along with our signature Reusable Bowl Program, we’ve applied a variety of insurance policies geared toward lowering waste in all types throughout our shops. Notably, our partnership with meals surplus app, Too Good To Go permits us to avoid wasting hundreds of meals from going to waste.

We’re intently 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 just the start of a journey to lowering 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 decisions is critical to alter this statistic. To realize this, larger transparency about meals’s position in local weather change is required to assist shoppers select decrease influence meals, and our crew determined to play an element 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 data 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 prospects to climate-smart meals decisions on our menus. Following the launch of our Climatarian filter, we noticed an almost 10% improve 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 components in an entire new manner, this endeavor was additionally daunting because of the sheer quantity of calculations concerned in bringing it to life. Our response was to crew up with an exterior companion, Planet FWD – a woman-owned, main carbon administration platform – to supply 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. Aside from serving to prospects make climate-smart meals decisions, our carbon labels assist us, as an organization, make culinary and sustainability enhancements collectively.

Going ahead, the problem of carbon labeling can be making it increasingly related to a bigger subset of consumers. Carbon literacy must be at the least as excessive as dietary literacy in order that labels have the supposed impact of serving to folks make planet-aligned decisions.

Marquis: Are there any new initiatives or applied sciences Simply Salad is exploring to cut 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 lowering our environmental footprint, we’re continuously exploring new alternatives to attain this purpose. Most not too long ago, we’ve been centered on the growth 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 accessible to the rising 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 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 presently accessible at ten Simply Salad areas, and we’re actively seeking 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 decisions. Via our efforts to advance our cellular app know-how and digitized buyer journey, we’re within the strategy of growing a brand new rewards program designed to incentivize wholesome, climate-conscious meals decisions. Sooner or later, we’ll look to reward and incentivize prospects to make extra sustainable purchases by this program, akin to providing rewards to visitors in alternate 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 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 world neighborhood of companies that meet excessive requirements of social and environmental efficiency, accountability, and transparency. Our crew is proud and honored to affix 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 duty.

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

B Corp Certification marks the constructive influence that Simply Salad has made within the communities it serves by specializing in folks and the planet since our founding in 2006. The requirements set by the B Corp motion will stay on the forefront of our function 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 evokes me to proceed discovering new methods to make a constructive 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 can have on the {industry} and the way do you propose to paved the way for others to comply with?

Kenner: We’re hopeful that this certification will deliver the restaurant {industry} collectively in constructive methods to cut back our collective environmental influence. We’d like extra meals firms on this neighborhood to make a robust, 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 pioneering a really round, waste-free method to dine on-the-go and hope that different QSR ideas will comply with swimsuit with related initiatives. Our Reusable Bowl Packages display that closed loop packaging programs are possible to execute inside 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 ideas 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 purpose is to speed up the transition to reusable, zero-waste packaging inside the fast-casual restaurant class.

Marquis: What recommendation would you give to different enterprise homeowners who need to make a constructive influence by 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 by a full possession method, reasonably than assigning ESG efforts to 1 individual or crew. B Corp is a multifaceted certification overlaying 5 influence classes, which have an effect on everything of a corporation. As such, environmental and social objectives shouldn’t be the duty of only one division, and all groups needs to be concerned in setting aims, executing them, and monitoring progress by measurable KPIs and efficiency metrics.

It’s necessary 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 crew members to take possession, you possibly can be certain that everyone seems to be working in the direction of the identical objectives and impressed to participate in a purpose-driven mission.