SCE: Chipotle Sustainability Tracker
My studies in my sustainable marketing class at WWU are coming to an end, meaning that this will be my last blog post. Sustainability has always been something that I truly cared for. Taking this course offered a new perspective on why sustainability is crucial in today's world and why individuals and businesses should strive to live and build a more sustainable future.
At the beginning of the quarter, we were prompted to follow a "Green Giant " business that generates billions of U.S. dollars in annual revenue with sustainability or social good at its core. The company I choose to follow in the news was Chipotle.
In the month of October, Chipotle released a sustainability impact tracker on the Chipotle app called "Real Foodprint," essentially an environmental calculator for your food order.
- The tracker compares average values for Chipotle's 53 real ingredients to their conventional counterparts against five key metrics.
- "RealFoodprint" is provided by HowGood, a mission-driven, independent research company with the world’s largest sustainability database for products and ingredients. Chipotle is the first restaurant brand to partner with HowGood.
- When customers order their food on the app, they can see what environmental impact their order is creating.
- Chipotle partnered with Bill Nye, the science guy, to show how exactly Real Foodprint works.
I believe what chipotle is doing here is great. The transparency that the impact tracker "Real Foodprint" offers holds Chipotle accountable to improve its practices and source more sustainably over time, cultivating a better world. I believe customers like the super greens and the upper-middle greens will appreciate this tracker because they will most likely appreciate and understand what the metrics are telling them. I was able to order food from Chipotle and see my FoodPrint, and it wasn't evident for me to understand. Since the tracker is so new, I believe chipotle needs to implement some changes so that not only super greens and the upper-middles would appreciate it and understand but also the others on the green continuum.