Decarbonizing Commerce

Driving All-Hands Employee Engagement with Ankit Patel of ZeroMe

Host Keith Anderson is joined by Ankit Patel, Vice President of Sustainable Solutions at ZeroMe, a platform for companies to engage and align their workforce with the company's sustainability goals through personalized awareness and education. Together, they cover interesting topics like the commonalities and distinctions between the rise of e-commerce and now the rise of sustainability, as well as tipping points that will nudge this discipline and this topic to the same level of sort of mainstream interest and adoption that e-commerce has experienced. Learn more about Ankit Patel: * Link to ZeroMe [https://www.zerome.com/]’s website * Link to Ankit’s LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/appatel80] Episode resources: * Metallica’s European Tour Showcases Renewable-Energy Big Rigs—And Their Limits - WSJ [https://www.wsj.com/articles/metallicas-european-tour-showcases-renewable-energy-big-rigsand-their-limits-b69a4195]  If you enjoyed this episode then please: * Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decarbonizing-commerce/id1700565143] * Follow and rate on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5WSVAdSAoZF27txma8D6rn] * Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co [http://decarbonize.co] Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=p8m5x1y8 [https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=p8m5x1y8]

Sweet Solutions to the Pollinator Crisis with Darko Mandich of MeliBio

Keith Anderson is joined by Darko Mandich, founder of MeliBio, a sustainable plant-based honey alternative. Together, they discuss the importance of new sustainable alternatives to industries that impact both the environment and animal welfare, contrasting conventional approaches with the innovative practices of MeliBio regarding the commercial considerations of honey alternatives. Tune in for an enlightening perspective on the commerce, innovation, and considerations regarding honey bees and the industry built around them. Learn more about Darko Mandich: * Link to MeliBio [https://www.melibio.com/]’s website * Link to Darko Mandichh’s LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/darkomandich] Episode resources: * Mellody Foods [https://mellodyfoods.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqGVnxXNz6rWwMXtgrpKPdDrtVAPIGy9-B4KPRqWVOJAIXwFHuK]  If you enjoyed this episode then please: * Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decarbonizing-commerce/id1700565143] * Follow and rate on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5WSVAdSAoZF27txma8D6rn] Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co [http://decarbonize.co] TRANSCRIPT BELOW:  Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability.  Hello, welcome back to the decarbonizing commerce podcast. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and we've got a sweet episode for you this week. Our guest is Darko Mandic, founder of MeliBio, a sustainable plant-based honey alternative. And we talk a lot about the importance of creating, new sustainable alternatives and industries that, We have a significant impact on the environment and animal welfare. We do some comparison and contrasting of conventional approaches to honey production versus the practices that MellyBio is using. And we spent a ton of time on some of the consumer and commercial considerations that Darko and his team have faced in areas like taste and unit economics and distribution strategy, as they develop the product and are building both a national brand in Mellody, which you'll hear more about, and supporting some retailers with private label brands. So, I'm really excited for you to meet Darko, learn more about bees, honey, and MeliBio. Darko, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. Darko Mandich: Thanks for having me. Keith Anderson: Well, I love to start with a bit of the founder's story and a bit about the company that you're leading. Can you tell us a bit about MeliBio and Mellody and how you came to invent and start the business? Darko Mandich: MeliBio started with a big dream of two people who really care about bees and are really connected to the importance of bees for our planet. So in 2020, after I emmigrated from Europe to the United States, With this idea to update the hunting industry, make it sustainable. I came to San Francisco to join the food tech scene that was booming at that time over here. And at one of those meetups, I met a scientist. His name is Aaron Schaller. And, he was finishing his PhD at UC Berkeley at that time. And we started talking about bees. He told me that he's a scientist who's looking to join the food tech scene. He loves bees because he's also a gardener. I have my own story with bees. I used to work for honey companies and companies making bee products using bees. And I've seen everything about that industry. Wanted to bring some changes there. And when Aaron and I met, end of 2019, just felt like it was meant to be. Keith Anderson: Tell us a bit about what you learned as somebody working in the honey industry, as it's conventionally operated, what are some of the challenges of producing honey and other related products with live bees. Darko Mandich: Honey is a fascinating product as well as some other bee products too. bees are such intelligent creatures that work in amazing way as community and many communities, and they have this ability to produce. Amazing ingredients that traditionally have been used by food, beverage, beauty, personal care, cosmetics and pharma industry. So bee products are really everywhere. And I joined this industry in 2012, right after I finished my business school, without having any prior knowledge. I just got a job offer from a company that is a significant company back in Europe that has a division. That works on bee products and that really got me excited. I joined that industry not knowing anything and, now I'm still in it in a different form. But before launching MeliBio as the world's first company that's giving bees a break by putting science to work instead of honeybees, I can say that, it's, it's an industry that is fascinating in so many ways, it's an industry that's growing because next time you go in supermarket or a pharmacy store, you'll probably identify many products that are formulated with one of the ingredients that bees are known to make. Especially Honey. Keith Anderson: Well, I'm the father of a seven year old daughter and you'll be happy to hear Darko, she asks for honey on everything. This morning, she agreed to have oatmeal if I would put honey on the bananas in the oatmeal. Darko Mandich: I'd love for her to try our product and, see how things go, so. we have to definitely a taste happen. Keith Anderson: We'll, Darko Mandich: let's do that. Keith Anderson: On a future episode, we'll come back and share the results. Darko Mandich: yeah, that, that's how we landed some of our customers, but we'll speak about that a little bit later. I think, humans at some point identified a way to domesticate one species of bees. their name is Apis mellifera or European honeybee. And that was figured out a long time ago and in 16th or 17th century, Spanish conquistadors brought first beehives to this part of the world. They brought them to Yucatan in Mexico. And then since then, the beehives with honey, European honeybees proliferated across this side of the world and are now one of the biggest, biggest species here, but that's just one of the 20 000 bee species that exists. People when people talk about bees, they usually refer to honeybees and people usually get surprised when I tell them you probably don't know much about bees because if you think of bees, you probably think of this one subspecies. And people get surprised when I tell them the story, there are 20 000 different bee species, 4 000 of native bee species only in North America. Keith Anderson: That's amazing. so, in the business of using bees to produce honey, I don't think of necessarily the footprint as being immense, at least compared to some of the other animal-based product categories. But I am aware that bees have been under a lot of environmental pressure and I know there's a lot of interdependency of other crops on bees. So why don't we spend a little time talking about some of the trade-offs between a plant-based versus conventional approach in the category. Darko Mandich: Absolutely. So our company, MeliBio, commercialized this approach to take the same plants that bees visit in nature and turn them into a product that taste the same, look the same, behave the same, and is very close on the molecular level to real honey. And that's where we launched Mellody, our brand, plant-based honey, as well as some private label deals with retailers, especially in Europe. And, the reason we're doing that is we really love the bees. And we say that there's no other company in the world that loves bees as much as we do. And because of that, we want to give them a break. And then people ask, but why would you give bees a break? Because they're doing what they're meant for. So the story here is that we essentially need bees to keep the plant as we know it, because bees are essential pollinators. They contribute to the food system, to the plant diversity. Essentially, our existence as humans on this planet wouldn't be possible without bees. So, why the need to give them a break from the work on the products that we harvest from them? In the process of Manufacturing bee products, especially honey, on a large scale, the species of bees, as I mentioned, European honeybees, are being artificially bred and added into ecosystems where they don't belong. And that is causing them to do this thing that I like to refer to as pollinator gentrification. They don't allow other pollinators and other bee species to share this space. And they're essentially very aggressive and invasive. So our thesis is, if we take the work of the honeybees and start turning plants into the honey, the bee ecosystems will get a break from that artificial pressure that humans are creating. And therefore, The nature will balance things out in ecosystems. Bees will be thriving, all these species, they will be doing their favorite work, which is just, pollination. And we'll take over from the work that is essentially very damaging for our planet. If we continue just relying on these honeybees that will just push, back on all the other pollinators. Keith Anderson: I like that solution more than another one that I've heard of, which is robotic bees to pollinate, because in that scenario, I don't get the honey. Darko Mandich: So with the robotic bees, I'm just hoping, I think a lot about that because, there are things that need to be done on the pollination side, especially in California. You have these large almond orchards where a lot of honey bees are being brought because it's very convenient for almond growers, but that's actually not great for California bumblebees that are specifically endangered species, here in California. For me, the robotic bees feels like if that comes into play and becomes a mainstream, that would mean that we lost other opporunities to make things right. So if we really end up using robots to pollinate the planet, that would tell me that we failed in so many ways to make nature balance things out. So for us, to have nature do its thing is really making sure that we don't have too much honeybees. As a company, we're not saying, "hey, let's stop, beekeeping entirely or bee pollination. Let's kind of, destroy the presence of honeybees in North America." We're not saying that. We're just saying that it's too many of them. And it's just requiring a thoughtful approach to producing bee products. So we believe that if we take those same plants and turn them into products that people love, that chefs love, that people can't distinguish on blind tasting, and we do that in a bee-friendly way, we have an opportunity to, just kind of, give a slight nudge to the nature to tell it, "Hey, we're here. You can take over." Every time someone consumes our product and you can see behind my back, you are contributing to removing the work of 20 000 honeybees from ecosystem. You're basically helping bee biodiversity. Keith Anderson: That's really interesting. One of the things that I find myself doing is sort of sorting product categories on a couple of dimensions. We talked about the category's environmental impact. The flip side of that coin is its susceptibility to more extreme temperatures, more volatile weather. We had a guest on from a company that produces olive oil. And that's a category where droughts and other crop disruptions have really impacted quality and quantity of supply and therefore pricing. Is that a present issue in the animal-based honey industry, or is it more of a future possibility? And where does plant-based honey fit into that equation? Darko Mandich: It's a great question. People are reading about their chocolate prices going to the roof because of issues around cocoa supply chain. There are challenges around all kinds of oils, including olive oil and palm oil. I think honey is coming up next, unfortunately, and here's why. THe, honey, manufacturing, is complex because it only happens within a few months in a year. So in a given geography, within a couple of weeks per year, you have an opportunity to make spring honey in Europe, or you can make, summer honey in Asia. And if weather conditions within those couple of weeks, within a given geography, are not perfect, that heavily influences the yield of the product. So I've seen years working for honey companies where I had to deliver thousands of tons of products. I'm talking about million dollar plus contracts where within few weeks price doubles. So imagine how does that affect the supply chain, the purchasing departments of various ingredients companies and private label companies. They just don't understand what's happening. They're flying their teams from Western Europe or the United States to Ukraine or the Balkans to see for themselves how come that the ingredient that they used to pay this much doubles in price within a few weeks. So that is because of weather affecting the crop very much and that particular animal working in that particular geography only within those few weeks when certain flowers are blooming. So, when I think about environmental issues and, animal welfare, which are definitely something that's close to my heart, and the main reasons I'm doing this, there's a set of reasons that require us to update honey industry that are just purely capitalistic. Efficiency, supply chain predictability, for United States, it's important to say that people mostly don't consume American honey because you don't get to consume it because most of the products on the shelves that you buy are formulated with imported honey. I mean, importing food, it's not a big problem, the world functions in a global trade environment, but I need to say that most honey coming into this country is dependent on different regions in the world in different countries that don't have levels of standard that are required here. And very often some of the shipments go through and some of the product that is not honey ends up on the shelves. And that's usually a product that's cut with rice syrups and things like that. And we make our honey without bees, our plant-based honey. We only use components that would be components of honey in nature. So, some people ask me, "Oh, in a world of fake honey, what are you guys, what are you guys doing?" And I'm saying, "hey, that's a great question." Fake honey is 10 percent of real honey and 90 percent of rice syrup. We don't use rice syrup in our product because bees wouldn't bring rice into honey. But there are so many challenges and we believe that Mellody being an American brand, bringing the manufacturing back into the US, guaranteeing our consumers that were regulated here by domestic market that we have to comply with very stricter quality standards than many other markets out there that are trying to, sometimes just dump their products here. I think there are so many reasons outside of the environment that build a strong case for the existence of companies of ours and our brand Mellody. Keith Anderson: Well, as you said, you're one of the first vegan honey companies, maybe the only, and you've followed an interesting path so far, with both B2B and B2C routes to market. I'm often looking at the value equation for these disruptive entrants in a category through the following lenses. One is what you can think of as, the merits, I guess, sort of conventional taste, nutritional profile effectiveness, whatever the consideration factors are for the, for a given category. And the second would be sort of climate alignment, both through the sense of is it low impact and is it in steady supply? And then the third is sort of, unit economics and how those compare. And I know that it's very early so, a lot of the economies of scale that the conventional honey industry enjoys, I'm sure are not here yet. But how do you think about the business case, whether you're pitching distribution for your own brand to a retailer, or whether you're pitching your product as an ingredient or a private label alternative. Where, what do you find is most resonant in those scenarios today? Darko Mandich: Taste is the king. And then taste is the king. And again, taste is the king. The first three important things to make a product successful. So we nailed that. And when we were comfortable with the taste of our product, we wanted to land, and we were successful in landing Eleven Madison Park, a three Michelin star restaurant, as our first customer. After me hearing a podcast where the founder of Eleven Madison Park, Chef Humm shared his story of their restaurant turning plant-based except for one ingredient, which is honey, because they were not comfortable with honey alternatives at that time. That, that was an interesting story. We wanted to convince them that there's a company who succeeded for the first time ever to make an alternative that tastes great, and that is also, by the way, vegan. Vegan honey alternatives existed, actually, before our company. They were usually syrup-based products made of tapioca, stevia, all these ingredients that naturally are absolutely not connected with honey. I'm not saying people shouldn't go for other sweeteners, try products and see what works for you. But we wanted genuinely to make, as much as we can, real honey made without bees. So once we nailed the taste, we realized that there's a certain level of people that will get excited about a very expensive world's first product. And then that story can live for a certain amount of time. And if we don't expand that into including more customers, that's not going to be a viable case, because we want to build a large company because large company for us means large impact, less honeybees required to make, those volumes of honey. The price was the next thing that we started working on. I can say that at this point, we match European honeys in Europe and American honey in the US we are on parity with those, and that's amazing because we've done that within three and a half years of R&D, and we raised about 10 million. In the food tech industry, many companies exist that raise hundreds of millions of dollars. There are a few that raise almost a billion dollars and are still not at a commercial level that, that we are. I think the goal by the end of this year is try to make our solution a little bit cheaper than domestic products made by bees here in the United States. And then the next target would be to try to compete with countries like Ukraine, Brazil, Vietnam, where a lot of, cheaper honey is being made. With the inflatory pressures and consumers and businesses that I project and the economists say will last through the next couple of years, I think it's responsibility, huge responsibility from companies like ours to continue working on scale and science to get up, to make our prices go down. Because yes, we're vegan, honey, but we also want to include everyone, including the vegans. And we want to make sure that when we talk to food service operators, retailers, businesses, that our approach is the most efficient and that them joining the bee coalition, heroic mission of saving the bees also makes a good impact on their calculation. And for all of that, to put more dollars back in consumers' wallets. Keith Anderson: Yeah, I will say, I think you've done a nice job describing the challenge that so many companies, whether they're technologies or consumer products, are trying to cross that chasm from the early adopters and reach a critical mass of mainstream customers or shoppers. And, I think more and more of the industry is prioritizing product superiority and parity. But I haven't encountered a huge number of examples where pricing and unit economics are competitive, and so it's really exciting that you're, in some ways there and still making that a focus. Darko Mandich: It's back to the DNA of our team. Because when we were thinking about who should be part of our team, we really thought that one big requirement to join our team would be that you have a previous scale up experience and hopefully with a lot of mistakes. And the reasons I'm saying mistakes is that people learn through mistakes. And in the past few years, there's been this huge influx of activists going into the food industry, wanting to pitch solutions that make the world a better place. And that's amazing. I think of myself, big part of myself being an activist, wanting to build this world for humans and bees that's better, for myself and the future generation and for people around me. But there's a big part in the way how I run this team and the members of our team around our previous experience in scaling manufacturing. Working for other companies, I built two manufacturing facilities. I worked with co-packers. I built extensive international supply chains. And that kind of knowledge really helped us get past the activism and coolness. Because activism and coolness has this initial phase that lasts. And even for companies like Tesla or Apple, at some point, it just kind of faded out and you just start to become this company that talks about efficiency, latency, how fast can you fill out the orders, how can you make the people on the other side of supply chain happy. And I think if you build teams with that DNA, any, in any industry that requires physical products to be manufactured and moved, it's being required. And I would like to see more of that. And as we also grow as a team, I would love to see more people who have dealt with ingredients or even honey who would happily join our mission and use that knowledge from before and hopefully many thoughtful mistakes and do things differently to make people happy. Keith Anderson: Well, the, love the idea of the DNA being so essential and predictive of outcomes. Darko, if people want to learn more about you or your products, where would you direct them? Darko Mandich: Absolutely. If you are an industry executive looking to learn about more about our technology and possibilities and some of the large enterprise deals that we've done, such as a deal with Aldi in Europe, I advise you go to, MeliBio.com, which is our company website. If you're a consumer that cares to know where you can get our brand Mellody in your favorite restaurant or store or even online in the US, go to Mellodyfoods.com and, learn about our story and get one of our two products that exist in the US market. We have Golden Clover, which is a regular, original, our number one product. But we also have an exciting Spicy Habanero, world's first plant-based hot honey. Hot honey is a growing category, especially in pizzerias. And if you like some spiciness or you like to add some kick to a burger or salad, I try you suggest, I suggest you try our new product that we just recently launched. Keith Anderson: That one caught my eye when I was poking around the site.  Darko Mandich: It's super hot. People love it. Keith Anderson: Is it? I'm going to have to put it somewhere where my daughter won't, confuse it with the regular though. She's not as big a fan of spice as I am. Well, Darko, what a, fascinating opportunity. Congrats on the progress so far and good luck. And thanks again for joining me for the show. Darko Mandich: Thank you for having me and thank you for thinking of the bees.  Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the Decarbonizing Commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of Decarbonizing Commerce.  Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=qn0q22x8 [https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=qn0q22x8]

Commercializing Sustainability with Phil White of Grounded World

In this episode of Decarbonizing Commerce, host Keith Anderson welcomes Phil White, co-founder of Grounded, a boutique agency and B Corp focused on embedding sustainability into business models. Phil discusses how Grounded helps both large and emerging brands integrate sustainability into areas like product design, packaging innovation, and retail activation. By connecting purpose to profit, Grounded aims to close the gap between sustainability intentions and commercial actions. Phil shares insights into their innovative approach, including case studies on transforming consumer behaviors towards more sustainable practices and the importance of commercial value in driving retailer support for sustainability initiatives. This episode highlights the critical steps and collaborative efforts required to make sustainability a core business driver. Learn more about Phil White: * Link to Grounded World [https://grounded.world/]’s website * Link to Phil’s LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/philbenjwhite] If you enjoyed this episode then please: * Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decarbonizing-commerce/id1700565143] * Follow and rate on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5WSVAdSAoZF27txma8D6rn] Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co [http://decarbonize.co] TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability.  Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce. I'm Keith Anderson. I'm really excited about this week's episode because when I started Decarbonize.co, my core thesis was that many retailers and brands struggle to embed sustainability commercially. That is, adapt their business models and integrate sustainability objectives into the way that they do what they do. And our guest this week is Phil White, who along with his partner and wife, Heidi, is co founder of Grounded, a boutique agency and B Corp that helps both large, established, and emerging retailers and brands make progress in what I call commercial sustainability. That is, embedding sustainability as a discipline in areas like product design, packaging innovation, retail activation, and much more that you'll hear about from Phil during this week's episode. But, when I met Phil a few months ago and learned about the work that he and Heidi are doing, I wanted to continue the conversation and be sure that you all could listen in because I think it really represents a lot of what we as an industry are going to have to focus on over the next decade or so. And I saw firsthand through other industry transitions, like the growth of digital commerce, just how much effort and coordination it takes to, make a shift like this across different functions. So I'm very excited to introduce you to Phil White of Grounded. Phil, good to see you. Welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast. Thanks for having me. Well, I thought to kick us off, maybe you could tell us a bit about the business that you and your partner, Heidi, run, Grounded, and how you came to start that particular venture.  Phil White: Sure. With pleasure. So, so grounded. So grounded, I guess the way we describe ourselves is a social innovation and brand activation agency. And the reason we chose those two terms was kind of quite specific because, particularly in the world of brand purpose and sustainability, we realize the existential challenge that most companies and brands and actually non profits face, frankly, is the ability to connect the why of purpose to the way of doing business. Or sometimes we say the way of profit, obviously we can't say that for non profits because it's a bit contradictory, but it's the way that you connect your purpose to Keith Anderson: Getting things done. Phil White: getting things done. And the more we kind of got into that, the more we heard that this was the existential challenge faced by most businesses, particularly today, the more we realized that the way to solve that was to kind of figure out what the gap between intention and action actually is, or in other words, purpose and profit. Same difference, just to kind of level deeper. And therefore, that's why we focus on innovation because innovation is obviously setting the intention in terms of what you want to sell, produce, deliver in order to add value to the consumer and drive some kind of revenue. And then action is actually what you're going to do to unlock that revenue and sell stuff, right? How are you going to change behavior and get people to buy it? So, that's why we kind of Focus on those two areas. And that's why a lot of the work we do is more upstream innovation focused in terms of coming up with kind of positioning and propositions and go to market strategies and ideas and platforms and sometimes products and packaging and innovation. And the other part then is often focuses on retail, because obviously that's where the rubber hits the road, right? To figure out how are we going to get people to actually believe that this is worth buying versus their competitors in the category, wherever it might be, and actually figure out where the intention action gap is and how big it is that's preventing people from making a better, more responsible, sustainable choice. And then when we can close that gap, then sustainability stops being a risk mitigating factor, a cost to the business and starts becoming a driver of consumer demand. Purchase intent, which again is the holy grail. So going back to what Decarbonizing Commerce is all about is how do you commercialize sustainability? And that's exactly what we do. So that's what we do all day every day is help clients figure out how to commercialize sustainability. Keith Anderson: And in terms of your background and, Heidi's background, has sustainability always been your focus, or are you coming to the topic from a different perspective? Phil White: Yeah, no, it's a great question. So before we started Grounded, we worked for a big global advertising network that everyone knows and we actually run the Unilever business here in North America. And we were kind of pretty instrumental in trying to figure out how you can translate Paul Polman's, sustainable living plan into tangible brand building activations and campaigns, basically. And the more we got into doing that, the more we wanted to do it, because we saw the positive impact that we could have, the more engaged the teams that we ran were and wanted to be part of it. And of course, as we did more of that, we got more connected to the UN and the Sustainable Development Goals. And we began to kind of, see the importance of why this was critical, right? In terms of driving, trying to, activate that plan to save the world. So it's really all of those three things coming together that made us go, okay, well, actually we want to be doing more, of this. And because we work with a big multinational, agency holding group, and we're working with one of the biggest multinational companies on the planet, amazing credibility and amazing experience, but it's still too slow. We're not seeing the impact that we want to have. We're not operating in an agile and exponential way. So I think like most kind of slightly jaundiced and tired advertising agency execs, we decided that it was time to kind of separate from the mothership and go off and do our own thing. So Grounded was born in 2018, actually, to be exactly that. A smaller boutique, more agile, more nimble, exponential agency to help you kind of transform purpose into profit and create value by doing good. So that's kind of how we all started. Keith Anderson: Well, maybe we can bring it to life with, one or two case studies or examples. I think it would be really interesting to hear, who are the types of folks that are approaching you and what's the problem they're approaching you with? And then what do we do, what do you do to move the needle forward? Phil White: Yeah. Great question. So we kind of work with four, I guess you could say four main constituents. So we work with big kind of global enterprise level brands. Will that be Ford or the Lycra company or Nestle or Nespresso or whoever it might be. And that tends to be focused on two things. One is kind of helping them better articulate their overall corporate or brand purpose. And two is, as we talked about at the start, is how do you then connect that to the, your sustainability goals and commitments in order to turn those into drivers of value or purchase intent across whatever your brand portfolio is. So that's kind of, Pillar 1. The other kind of main constituent we work with, and connected to that then of course are the retailers, because often they're CPG orientated brands that need to then be activated at retail. So that's kind of where the retailers come in. We do have some retail, direct retail clients like Grove, Collaborative, for example. But usually it's through the lens of the brands themselves that we kind of engage with the retailers and, generally that tends to be the case. The other kind of main constituents are non profits. And they have a similar problem often in that they might have low brand awareness or low brand relevance or saliency that are out there in the market. But they're trying to fund all these programs on the ground and of course they need money. They need people to put their hands in the pockets and support them. So it's kind of the same deal. It's, it's a parallel world in terms of how do you figure out what your mission and your purpose is? How do you make that engaging and clear for people to want to support it? And then how do you drive the behavior change to people to put their hands in the pockets and support it? And it's, really the same thing. So, as we got into this and we started working with some larger non profits like the World Food Program and the UN Institutes Hospital and Plan International and the Samaritans and whoever it might be, we, quickly realized that there was a lot of commonality between what we'd learned for the past 30 years in terms of, brand building at a global level and activation and how you can apply some of those principles, package them up in perhaps a more accessible or exponential way for non profits. So that's kind of what we did, and I guess kind of what lies at the heart of what we do, to bridge that gap, a lot of the work we do is design sprint based, so we often kind of show up and do a lot of workshops and design sprints, and we do it efficiently, we do it at speed, and iteratively, and we facilitate it ourselves because that makes it accessible for the big brands who might be just stuck in a rut or stuck in their existing relationships, or just are struggling to kind of push the needle internally for whatever the myriad reasons there might be around sustainability. So it gives them a very quick opportunity, a wedge, if you like, to be able to kind of jump on and do something and get that ball rolling. And for nonprofits, from a financial equation point of view, obviously it's more accessible. So we can go in and we can do it fast because we generally know what we're doing and it ain't our first rodeo. So we can go in there fairly quickly and deliver the value and deliver the clarity that we need. so that tends to be kind of how we work. So I would say, in kind of summary,  we tend to do three things. We tend to kind of work with brands, retailers, startups, and nonprofits to help them articulate their purpose, pull that down into a brand position and then go to market strategy. We help them activate their brands, whether through packaging, design, identity, omnichannel experiences, digital, so whatever it is along the path of purchase and based on understanding where that intention action gap is to drive the behavior change and close that intention action gap. And then we help them accelerate their impact and that tends to kind of come down to obviously tracking and measurement because you can't. Manage what you can't measure, lots of kind of partnerships, either commercial or non profit. We work quite closely with UN Officer Partnerships, actually, and figure out often how to design sprint potential partnerships between for profit and non for profit sectors to, again, to accelerate SDGs. Going back to what I kind of said based on our experience with Unilever. And then we tend to do kind of publish and write quite a lot of thought leadership and do speaking engagements and run design sprints again, just to start getting that flywheel internally spinning. So people feel that they're able to kind of make progress against whatever initiatives or platforms that are already out there and working. So they tend to be the kind of three things, but I'd say the core of what all that really comes down to is the retail aspect. Because, the ability to then combine commercial innovation with brand activation or social innovation to brand activation is obviously the bit that is where the biggest gap is in our experience. So that's why we very much tend to focus and often, design sprint with brands and retailers together to try and come up with platforms that are going to drive that sustainability agenda through to the end consumer or the end shopper and drive the behavior change that everyone's looking for. Keith Anderson: And when we talk about behavior change, are we talking purely about making a product or brand switching or substitution decision, I'm going to swap a more sustainable option for what I'm currently buying, or is it in some cases even more significant behavioral change, for example, just making it up, switching from single use to refillable and reusable packaging. Phil White: Both and a lot more. So, a good example might be, so we were recently engaged by a startup that had licensed the, like the, Brita brand actually from Clorox. And they wanted to create a new bottled water and we're like, "Oh no, the world doesn't need another bottled water. That's the very last thing we need." But when we got into it, we kind of thinking about the Brita system and the Brita equity, we realized, that there was a gap between, using your Brita kind of container at home, which is obviously a more, much more sustainable way of consuming and storing water and the actual kind of reality, the usage gap of people forgetting their swell bottles and forgetting their reusable bottles when they went out or, did whatever. There was a gap in the market. Keith Anderson: I think it's Stanley bottles now, Phil. Phil White: Stanley, there you go. I'm obviously out of touch and this was only two years ago. But what that gap was meaning that what people were doing was doing what everyone does is just default to walk into your nearest retail outlet and buy a plastic water bottle, right? So that was the gap that we were actually filling. That was the category opportunity, but also the intention action gap that we're quite literally trying to close. So as a result of that, we did a lot of research, competitive landscape assessments and retail audits and focus groups and you name it, all the usual stuff and realized that actually this problem was much bigger than we thought it was. And there was the real, there was a really behavioral problem there that people were forgetting, wanted to do the right thing and not buy plastic water bottles and all that kind of stuff, but reality, when you're out or you're late for work or you're stuck out as you've been on vacation, you know outside and you're desperate for a drink, you're gonna just do what you do and go and buy a bottle, a plastic water bottle. 'Cause usually that's the only option. So this entire platform is about how do we develop a product that fills that gap, that addresses that need, which switches people out of buying plastic water bottles, but also kind of gets them into a more regular behavior where they can actually fill up their water bottle at home. They can buy it once, they can drink it on the go, but they can keep it because it can be used for six or seven times. So they can actually use it as a kind of interim, as a fill in for their kind of normal kind of swell or Stanley water bottle. So that was a bit of everything. That was like changing perception, changing attitudes, changing behavior, locking people into a new system or new ritual, as well as identifying the bigger category gap that was driving the, which was driving, kind of negative environmental impact, let's say. So maybe that's a good example of, how, it addressed all of those things simultaneously. So to your point, yeah, it's rarely one thing, but the, idea of figuring out where the intention action gap along the journey is, once you know where the biggest intention action gap is, where it's occurring, how big it is, then you can focus on, all your energy on addressing that. And then use rest the journey tactically to kind of try and embed or habituate the right behavior, which is often what we end up trying to do. Keith Anderson: And just sticking with that example, how much of the, effort to close that intent to action gap happened at the, were there ad campaigns that support it? Is it a packaging redesign? What kind of retail activation ends up being pivotal to something like that? Phil White: Yeah, yes, all of the above, definitely an omni channel, but it started effectively with a new product, a new pack, an entirely new kind of product packaging driven proposition, which then obviously fundamentally needed to be merchandised and displayed at retail in the category and at the moment where people would otherwise default to buying and doing what they usually do. So, it's still launching and rolling out, frankly. And a lot of it has been driven initially through social, through very kind of targeted, geo targeted social media to just raise the awareness and the relevance and set the occasion. But of course, retail, just in terms of its ability to kind of drive visibility and accessibility is obviously the most important thing, particularly in this category. Which is, that's what drives the category. It's visibility and accessibility. That's it, basically. So if you're not, if you're not, if you're not visible and you're not available, then you ain't gonna, you ain't gonna win. Keith Anderson: Makes a ton of sense. And, then, of course, there's the commercial value equation. Do we sell more? Are the margins, comparable or accretive? Is that part of the work also? or are we starting really from the customer and working backwards? Phil White: Yeah,  so often what we try and do with the intention action gap is we try and size it. How big is it? And then what for value can you put against not closing it? Right? So, what's the category selling story, right? What's the size of the prize or the money that's being left on the table by not closing the gap? And that's usually the way in because as we all know, rightly or wrongly, depending on which way you look at it, retailers want to drive category value, right? They want to drive category profit. And you can talk a lot of great stuff around sustainability, but unless it's going to drive the value commercially at a category level that retailers are looking for, it's going to be very hard to convince buyers to support it. It's just the reality of how the machine works, right?  But if you can frame it as, well, this is how much money you're losing on the table, leaving on the table, if you don't do this, and this is the quantified amount, right? Oh, and by the way, this also ties back to your, your sustainability objectives as a retailer that you've pledged to uphold that you're holding your suppliers to account for to deliver. We're turning up not only doing that for you, which helps, with your kind of own commitments, but we can deliver higher category profit and value. Why wouldn't you do it? And that's really the essence of what it comes down to, it's connecting those dots. Keith Anderson: And are you starting to see the retailers be responsive to that kind of framing? I mean, I, look at some retailers who are increasingly vocal about how they're incorporating some of these factors in decisions about assortment and merchandising. They're introducing their own labeling schemes to add credentialing to some of the products that meet their conditions. Is that something that's still relatively limited across major retail or is it becoming more widespread? Phil White: I mean, I think, I don't think there's a clinker answer to that. I think it just depends. you have retailers that embody those values into their own label products and portfolios, right? We all know who they are and do very well at it. And there are those that are trying to figure out how to do it. And there are those that are on the bleeding edge of circularity and changing their infrastructure, right? To, try and deliver it with reverse logistics and reselling and re-commerce and all the other good stuff that needs to be kind of built up around it. So, It just depends. And I think part of it is going back to kind of figuring out then, from a brand owner's point of view is what's our purpose? What can we realistically deliver, credibly deliver from a sustainability point of view? How is that going to support the sustainability commitments of our retailer, our customers, and therefore what activation platform can we build around it? To kind of move the needle. and I think there's always tends to be, particularly in this space, that tends to be a kind of just a general conception that if you don't knock it out of the park, then it's not worth doing. And of course that's never the case. Rome was not built in a day. It's the little incremental steps over time that build up that result in the, in, in the impact. So half of the problems often, and again, why we approach this from a design spring point of view is that the barriers to then engagement are as low as we can possibly get them. We can get as many people together, cross sector people from together from different, areas of the business interacting and interfacing and ideating around it. So the chances of something getting out there and happening are greatly increased. And then it's a case of giving it a run and seeing what happens. And, usually, I would say, once you get it in and it starts working, then it tends to kind of grow and then sometimes becomes a category platform and then sometimes becomes an ongoing evergreen platform and sometimes even gets to become a complete category invention priority kind of moving forward for a, for a retailer. So yeah, there's so many different ways in which it can, kind of show up. It, I think it really just depends on kind of where you are on your journey, and trying to figure out that connection point between, you feel like what the brand stands for, where the intention action gap is, and what's going to have the biggest impact socially and environmentally. Keith Anderson: Yeah, I, I was speaking with a brand this morning who I think is, sort of mid flight on a very similar initiative. They're trying to pivot from single use to refillable, in at least one of their product lines. And like most brands, they're starting, they've been in market for about a year, six months in a limited regional pilot, six months nationally, and the early results are encouraging. They've now converted about 25 percent of their own brand buyers to the refill. The economics look good for the retailer and them, and they're, to your point, now starting to explore, well, what kind of, shelf design is going to be necessary to really scale this. And so, it's, turning into an opportunity for a particular retailer, along with this brand, to do something, unique and different that, Who knows? I know at least the brand is hopeful that in 12 or 18 months, it'll migrate from the first retailer to many others. Phil White: Yeah. And, not for nothing, we all know what, we all know the policies that are coming down the pipe. Right. Particularly EPR and the impact that's going to have on both brands and retailers to, to kind of, clean their act up a little bit, quite frankly. So with all of these things coming down the pipe, I think we're going to, we're anticipating that we're going to see a lot more of these initiatives and innovations, not because they're nice to do, but because they're a have to do. Keith Anderson: Sure. Sure. Phil White: So that's the, that, that's the hope anyway. Yeah. Keith Anderson: Thinking almost about the other side of the coin, I'm thinking of another major brand who just reassigned one of their veteran executives, 20 year veteran at the company, with experience in a lot of functions, sales, marketing, e-commerce, very little in sustainability, but that person has now been tasked with taking credit, and getting credit with shoppers and retailers for some of the good things they've already done. Is that a scenario that you've encountered where in fact, they've already done things to clean up their act and now it's as much about finding a way to present that? Both commercially and to consumers? Phil White: Yeah, for sure. So something that we'll hopefully talk about the conference in Chicago a little bit more around is, a kind of design sprint that we've developed called Retail Activation for Good. And it's quite literally designed to do everything that we just kind of talked about. And even though we kind of launched it about three years ago and it was based on, lots of deep insight with some of the biggest brands and retailers on the planet who were kind enough to contribute their thought leadership and examples to help us build out this framework in these case studies.  Believe it or not, it was quite tough to get it going. And we were like, we don't understand why, because everyone's asking for it. And it took a while for the penny to drop because a lot of these big companies are still kind of caught up internally with what's our purpose and what's our sustainability goals and commitments and how to report against them and how do we quantify them and how do we kind of position them internally and how do we get funding in and, getting it down to the, what you might call the tactical level of retail is, of course, where everyone knows it needs to be. But getting there, crossing that bridge and taking that path is a bit of a challenge. So it's taking a while for companies to go through that journey of internal transformation and understanding, and then figure out how to collapse the traditional silos that exist within, larger companies and be more kind of, what's the word? Intersectional is probably the right word in terms of how do we approach these problems.  And, how does the CMO and the CSO and the COO and the CRO, the CIO, whoever it might be, all get together to kind of figure out, say that, sustainability doesn't exist in a silo. It touches or should drive everything from innovation to activation. So that not only demands a different mindset and way of thinking, functionally and, operationally, it demands a different way of working. so it, we tend to find that, even though retail activation for good makes complete sense. To many companies, many are still on that journey of transformation and trying to figure out how to kind of rally the support and change the design and their operational infrastructure to enable them to actually get to the point of doing that. And there's relatively few actually proportionally that are there and that are able, to do it.  Keith Anderson: Are there any that you would hold up as, shiny beacons of inspiration for folks listening? Phil White: Yeah, I mean, there's some that do just do that naturally and intuitively, Grove Collaborative probably being a kind of good one because of just their proposition and their purpose and their positioning. You've got larger organizations that have been doing this actually for, a number of years, whether that be kind of PNGs and Unilevers through to your kind of, your Patagonias and whatever it might be, right? And, as a certified B Corp ourselves, we tend to kind of see that, a lot of the B Corp brands and businesses tend to kind of, again, have a tendency to kind of do this more intuitively anyway, because it's kind of embedded into their operating and procedure and their governance, right. And how they think and kind of how they behave. So, and what's kind of interesting is what we're seeing is that the smaller, the kind of smaller disruptors that are coming into established categories and shaking things up a bit tend to be also be the more sustainable or purpose driven brands that are able to get that flywheel spinning quicker and have a cohort, a smaller cohort, a very active, often younger, more dynamic consumers behind them are kind of helping to kind of drive that agenda. So that's an interesting thing that we're seeing, whether that be in beauty or fashion or diapers or whatever it might be, you're getting these smaller players coming in and kind of disrupting the status quo a little bit. And they're the ones actually that we're finding are really kind of leading the pack and, encouraging the larger companies to try and, change their behavior, which tends to result in those larger companies trying to buy them and acquire them. Which sometimes works, more often than not doesn't, because as soon as you get... if you're bought by a big brother or big sister, then you kind of tend to lose the essence and the drive behind what made you a disruptor in the first place, because you get lost in the, you kind of get lost in the, matrix, so to speak. So yeah, it's just, it's really, it's just a really interesting time to be intersectionally kind of where we're at, because there are so many forces at play. Keith Anderson: Yeah. I mean, you've just touched on something that, I pay very close attention to, which is where is the change originating, and, scaling? It, to your point, it very often starts with the emerging brands who have the benefit of being able to design from day one for the next decade or two without a century long legacy and large scale production facilities and established ways of working. They get to start from scratch and design the product and business that they think will be durable, for the future. But exactly as you say, they often struggle to remain independent. And then the question becomes, what does that integration, look like? Is it assimilation or do they end up setting the pace for the new mothership? Phil White: Right. And a good parallel to that is, whether you, depending on what side of the fence you're on, if you look at the kind of carbon offset marketplace and how many new disruptors have come in to, providing carbon offset platforms and verifiable projects. But what we're kind of finding is those smaller disruptors are kind of drying up a bit because the investors behind them are losing patience, frankly, Keith Anderson: Yep. Phil White: in their ability to kind of convert and get the growth, get the growth multipliers that they're looking for. So those are tending to go out of business or being acquired by other larger companies who are, who have got the resources and have got the infrastructure to be able to start to scale them. So that's a really interesting kind of dynamic that's going on just in that category. But I think that probably holds for quite a few, actually, when you kind of look at how it seems to be working. So, Keith Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. And I look at it, I mean, as, you and I have discussed offline, a lot of the work that I did in the early days of online grocery and e-commerce was helping some of the big retailers and brands initially assess, what's the speed and likelihood that this is going to be a big factor in my own business? And there was a lot of discussion and debate about, well, sure, for these small companies, it makes sense, but at our scale, it doesn't make sense. But looking back 10 or 15 years later, there's no question for direct to consumer and other emerging brands, it's, 80 percent in some cases of their total sales. But look at the majors, Amazon is a top five customer for basically any major CPG at this point. And so I'm optimistic that we'll see a similar maturity curve in this sense, where the companies again, that have the luxury of no legacy, they can get everything closer to right on the first swing at bat and, eventually as the infrastructure and the systems and the ways of working and the data and the tool set, all these things that are in development get refined and more sophisticated and battle tested. I think it's going to continue to borrow the word you used, it's going to grow exponentially. Phil White: Yeah, Keith Anderson: that's why you and I are both out here trying to help companies, get ahead of it because, the problem with ignoring things on an exponential trajectory is it always seems small and inconsequential until suddenly it's the only thing anybody can talk about, Phil White: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, hockey stick kicks in pretty quick, doesn't it? And you need to be at that election point, yeah, ready and open and willing to know how to do it. Yeah. Keith Anderson: Well, one thing I'm looking forward to is your sessions at the Summit in Chicago. Aside from that, is there anything on the horizon that you're really excited about or, looking forward to? Phil White: Lots. In fact, we were talking about it a bit before. I know kind of climate week, there's a lot going on at climate week, New York. And there's a kind of big CSO awards ceremony that's kind of happening during climate week that I'm kind of looking forward to and just kind of seeing some of the impact that some of these kind of global enterprise level CEOs are having on some of the issues that we've talked about, so that's kind of really exciting. We've got a kind of few interesting kind of projects in the pipeline as well, both on a kind of brand level and a non profit level. There's one non profit in particular, which I've really enjoyed working with, which I think has universal application to everybody called ProSocial World, and they've basically managed to combine evolutionary social and political science together to create a framework that enables groups to better cooperate and collaborate together. So if you can imagine the implication of that across every single sector, whether that be individuals, groups, organizations, networks, states, countries, nations, you name it. It has tremendous power. And one of the, as we all know, the new economic paradigm needs to shift from competitive to pre-competitive and it needs to be based on collaboration versus competition, because otherwise we're all going to run out of resources very quickly. And, the tragedy of the commons is going to kick in pretty quickly as it is already in some, in some markets. So, yeah, so that's the, that's what I'm most excited about because it ladders up to this new economic paradigm and it just challenges the very precepts on which we even think commerce is built. So that's kind of what I'm kind of quite excited about. And with, and we're hoping to run a session at the UN in November around the conscious attention economy, which is kind of linked to that, which is how do you kind of engage people in a more meaningful way and value, value their attention, not just in terms of clicks and eyeballs or whatever, but value their conscious attention in their ability to tackle some of these big, kind of larger issues, whether it be false narratives or AI and algorithms all the way through to how we currently monetize media. So lots of interesting stuff coming, going on.  Keith Anderson: No shortage of things to stay up to speed on. Well, Phil, I really enjoyed the conversation. I'm sure listeners did also. If folks want to get in touch with you, how can they reach you? Phil White: Yeah. So, website is grounded.world, or you can just drop me an email at phil@grounded.world, kind of simple as that. Keith Anderson: Wonderful. Well, thanks so much for joining us. Phil White: Thanks for having me. Great to see you. Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at Decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of Decarbonizing Commerce. Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=2nx03vmn [https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=2nx03vmn]

Cutting the Crap with Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan of Peachies

In this episode of the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast, host Keith Anderson interviews Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan, founders of Peachies, a London-based premium nappy brand focused on reducing environmental impact. They discuss how Peachies aims to disrupt the traditional nappy market with high-quality, eco-friendly products designed for contemporary parenting. Furthermore, they delve into how Morgan and Rima’s collaboration began at Imperial College and their journey from a business school project to launching a startup. The discussion covers the unique aspects of Peachies' design-centric approach, balancing sustainability with premium product performance, and their future aspirations for expanding the brand. Learn more about Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan: * Link to Peachies [https://wearepeachies.com/]’ website * Link to Morgan Mixon’s LinkedIn [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/morganmixon] * Link to Rima Suppan’s LinkedIn [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/rimasuppan] To listen to the full episode join our Plus or Pro memberships at decarbonize.co: * https://decarbonize.co/member-benefits/ [https://decarbonize.co/member-benefits/] 👈 If you enjoyed this episode then please: * Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decarbonizing-commerce/id1700565143] * Follow and rate on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5WSVAdSAoZF27txma8D6rn] Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co [http://decarbonize.co] TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability.  Welcome back to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. I'm your host, Keith Anderson. And our guests today are Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan of Peachies, a London based nappy brand that is aiming to disrupt the category with a premium take on diapers with a lower environmental footprint. They were participants in the Amazon European Sustainability Accelerator, among others, in the spring, they raised their first round of capital, and I, was introduced to them by another of our guests, Mark Rushmore of SURI, also based in the UK, who, you know, what I see in common about both of these brands is, you know, they're taking a very design-centric, practical approach to producing products that deliver on consumer expectations, while also being mindful of environmental and other sustainability considerations. And, as always, we get into some interesting commercial considerations, along with how they've made climate and sustainability considerations Central to the business model. So I'm really excited for you to meet Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan of Peachies.  Morgan and Rima, great to see you both. Thanks so much for joining the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast. Rima Suppan: Thank you so much for having us. Morgan Mixon: We're excited to be here. Keith Anderson: well, I think some of our listeners may be familiar with the company and the brand, but I imagine some are not. So maybe we can start just by introducing what is Peachies? What do you make? Rima Suppan: Well, Peachies is our life project in the meantime. I'll give you the full definition. So Peachies is a premium nappy brand for the contemporary parenting experience. What that means really is that we designed an upgrade to the, so to say, humble nappy. That means that we engineered these nappies for revolutionary softness and longer nights. Because that is really what parents deserve, and desire, of course. that means that we, of course, you know, we made substitutions for more eco friendly materials, for high quality materials, but also changed the design slightly so, that the fit of the nappy is really perfect for a child's skin, but also the needs that a child has. We then of course went through rigorous dermatological testing, to make sure that, yeah, we, our babies stay dry and comfortable. And we, yeah, nappy rushes is a thing of the past, so to say. Keith Anderson: Now my daughter is seven. Why did you wait until after she had outgrown nappies and diapers to start this company? Rima Suppan: Well, I guess because Morgan and I only met three years ago. Keith Anderson: Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, we're gonna come back and talk a lot about some of those attributes and benefits that you've basically designed into the product and the brand, but maybe we can take a minute and you can tell us about how you met and how you ended up deciding to start a, nappy or for our American listeners, a diaper brand. Rima Suppan: I'm happy to go first. So, Morgan and I really met at Imperial College. The nerds that we are. We were randomly selected by the Imperial College leadership to run the Innovation Entrepreneurship Club together. And then quite quickly, both coming from family businesses quite quickly realized that we really love working together and that at some points in our lives, we wanted to be entrepreneurs ourselves. We had little idea that would happen so quickly. But it happened and we're, super happy where we are today and thank God, we both took the decision to not become, Morgan, I think I wanted to be a product manager at some point. I wanted to go, back to my consulting career or into the tech space. I was at Google by that, at that time, and had an offer pending, but nappies, diapers just excited us way too much, to not to not go down that route. and so actually before starting that business, there, there was a funny story. it was of course COVID times when we met, we had never really met up in person before starting Peachies. And at some point we were like, we're only going to run a company together, build a company together if we actually get along in person as well. And so Morgan invited me over to, it was Dalston, right? Yeah, to Dawson, to a park and we had a full bottle of wine, and after that bottle of wine, we knew that was a match, not only company building wise and kind of, yeah, vision wise, but also personality wise, which is incredibly important, that is also a fit. Keith Anderson: Yeah, and I imagine you were socially distanced at that first meeting. Morgan Mixon: Yeah, exactly. We, well, we actually had a chance meeting outside the business school, during orientation, and Rima walked up to a friend and I and said, asked about a dress we were wearing. And I remember thinking like, who is this? But now I'm so grateful for her sort of social butterfly nature, and, willingness to just chat to anybody. And really the idea for Peachies, I mean, it started as a business school project. We are, we fall into that category. We were, very fortunate to be in a university during COVID time, a lot of down time to focus on your academics, but our course, the Imperial College Business School gives you a lot of opportunity to pursue entrepreneurial ventures, and, so just thinking about like, where can we have impact actually, and connecting back to kind of sustainability in its own right, we think about sustainability very holistically. We think about impacts at a societal level, at also an environmental level. And so we knew when we were coming up with an idea to work on, it would have to be something that got us out of bed in the morning. It wasn't going to be B2B software. That wasn't, that's not us. We actually love consumer products. We love getting excited about brands. We love trying new things. We love implementing them into our life. We love trying to find shortcuts to make the week easier. And we stumbled across nappies. We thought about, you know, our the people we would want to design for. And that was our friends and family. And we thought about our working moms and like what did they go through and where could their lives have been a little bit easier when we were growing up. And just so happens we're kind of at that life stage where everybody's kinda starting to reproduce . So we're kind of more in tune to parenting generally. And we saw this category that's, we think wildly overlooked. It's one of the kind of last necessity or essential goods that hasn't changed much, both from a product perspective, but also from a branding and community perspective, underlying also the very bricks and mortar retail service model. Whereas increasingly the world is direct to consumer subscriptions actually make sense for something like nappies that you need on a regular basis. And this is against a, you know, a backdrop of, you know, two global players that dominate really 80 percent of the global market, Procter Gamble and Kimberly Clark. It's old, stale brands that are boring, that are pastel, that do not reflect, in our opinion, what millennials want from the brands that they buy. both in terms of how it looks in the aesthetic, but also how the product performs and, the impact that it has. And so it was sort of a perfect storm. We saw, we saw all of this kind of coming together and thought, "we should think about this" and Imperial being Imperial, we had opportunities to enter competitions and accelerator programs and basically by the time it was time to graduate, we looked at each other and said, "Honestly, nothing else we're doing excites us more than, diapers." And that was a shocking for us, like, as you can imagine, you know, Rima had a very cushy job at Google. She was ecstatic about it. And I said, "surely you'd rather be a broke founder with me and pursue this." And she took the plunge as well. And we came out of school and said, "there's no time like the present. Why wait to start our entrepreneurial journey in five years or 10 years? Let's do it now." And we, yeah, took it forward, set up some email addresses, did some Google searching and the rest is history. Now we're a year into our journey in the markets. And, yeah, we're loving every single day, I have to say. Keith Anderson: So you launched a year ago and are you, what geographies are you available in? Rima Suppan: We're currently available in the UK only, but the future is bright. Keith Anderson: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's an interesting market, I find, in many ways, both on the retail side and on the innovation side. Yeah. you know, in our weekly newsletter, we include funding announcements from, you know, retailers, brands, solution providers, and, you know, a pretty high concentration of innovation in this little ecosystem that I'm studying in the UK. So, it's a, good place to start. Rima Suppan: I think particularly from a branding perspective and from a, as you mentioned, direct to consumer product perspective, London, particularly, is a very exciting place. There's a lot happening. And as Morgan mentioned, nappies is one of the, these overlooked or one of the last overlooked consumer product categories. And what we mean by that is we've seen things happening, happen in the, toilet paper space, for example, or in the razor space, where companies have just completely disrupted first, how, products are designed, how sustainable they are, but also the way how they're serviced and the channels that you can access them through. And so for us, London, as of course, it's. It's easier to found the business there than in many other places as well. So that was also a reason, of course, our geographical location was a reason for that. But also because it's, you know, it's an exciting space. You have a lot of accelerator programs there, a lot of, great universities. That was of course how we met. But yeah, the ecosystem is a great one nowadays with, you know, growing after completing our funding round. also that was, helpful to being, yeah, in the British market, but also now hiring talent for the first time or growing our team, substantially. It is just exciting, to have access to such incredible talent. Keith Anderson: Makes sense. So you've touched on two or three of the key themes that we typically cover. you know, one is, a category that is, really mature and large and, right for disruption. And you're sort of disrupting, or aiming to disrupt in two ways from what I'm hearing. One is, with a premium product that is, you know, better aligned with the shopper that is the parent and also has benefits for the consumer, you know, the, infant and, secondly is the environmental or sustainability angle. So I'd love to get into the interplay between those two, how big of a role in the product design and the packaging and the logistics and the branding, is sustainability? You know, do you lean on that heavily as a differentiator and a reason to buy, or is it much more about a premium, superior product, and, you know, it's sort of a nice to have, Where you can fit it into the business model? Morgan Mixon: It's a really good question. We think premium unlocks a lot of eco credentials and I'm happy to elaborate on that. To kind of set the scene, the diaper space has been really interesting and I'll use kind of the European context cause that's ours, but you have the big, you know, the big brands, the Pampers of the world. And then you kind of have the eco brands on the other side of the spectrum. and there's not much in the middle. And what we've seen is the big brands have no incentive to innovate. You know, they dominate. They're doing great. They've been doing great for 50 plus years or whatever. They're, fine. They, of course, sense customer sentiment is changing, but they also lack an authenticity to be able to portray the changes they make, to be able to make those product shifts or re gear their products compelling to consumers, I think. on the other side, you have what are sort of self professed eco brands. And we're talking really more on that kind of disposable diaper side of things. we think,  The cloth diapers will remain a niche for a lot of behavioral reasons because it's a huge fundamental shift in consumer behavior, but those eco brands that we've seen really increasingly pop up in our markets have focused so much on sustainability, they've sacrificed product quality. And so our philosophy is, despite, if you have all the best intentions to launch an eco products, but it doesn't stack up or stand up with its most basic job, which is to hold in all the things that come out of your child, then where are we? You know, like, if it's falling apart or tearing and you're going through more of them and throwing more away, are we really doing, are we really having a positive impact on the planet? So where we saw this opportunity was premium design. It was to elevate the product quality in a category that's been long commoditized. You know, in the UK, supermarkets, produce nappies at the White Label and even sell them as a lost leader just to bring people into the store. And so what we could do or the opportunity that we saw was let's elevate it. Let's bring in higher quality materials. Let's really focus on things like the fit of the products and dial things up and down in terms of the features so that we can provide a product. So on a range of products, that will make a significant impact on a parent's life,  because actually parents, and Rima will undoubtedly get to this in a bit, as part of the brand, parents are our protagonist. We design for them, we design for their well being, and we saw that if we dialed up premium, or dialed up the quality of design, we could have nappies that last a little bit longer, you could do fewer changes in a day. You could therefore do less laundry because you're not dealing with this kind of blowouts and stuff like that. We can make sure your child's skin is dry and protected and things like nappy rash aren't a problem. And all of those things have the added benefits of reducing impact on the planet. So we're very practical about our design. We call it no bullshit design, which means we will make advances in terms of integrating sustainable materials into our product as long as it doesn't sacrifice premium product quality. That's the most important thing to us. So, we, first and foremost, make sure that nappy works, and works to a level that we deem is exceptional, and then we think about how we can continuously improve on environment. But, the thing that is, I think, most important to kind of draw an analogy is, We think our nappies can be like preventative medicine in the sense that if you diet and exercise and take care of yourself, you end up going to the doctor less. And of course, going to A&E, hopefully never. Same with nappies. If you can use a more superior product and it's no surprise that it does come at a higher price tag, but that value that you unlock is actually ultimately sending less to landfill because you're not using as many. And you've got that assurance that the product is, safe and and, well, yeah, high quality, you're going to get to the night, for example, and that's really where we've tried to do something different in this space is actually premium can be something that really unlocks a lot of value for parents, and it's not just a race to the bottom, on price or, therefore product quality. Rima Suppan: I can add a few thoughts here. What Morgan mentioned, particularly on, on how sustainability plays a role in a consumer's decision making process. What we found out is sustainability for us sits very much at our core. So, yes, we've talked about the product a lot now, you know, highest quality materials. We, of course, continue to seek to reduce the environmental impact of our product and ensure better future for our children, in short, but for us, it is really elevating at one level higher up. It's also, as you mentioned, you know, the packaging that we use, the logistics provider that we use, the warehousing that we use, warehouse provider that we use, but even small things as a company, like, the office space we have, the internet provider we choose. Those are all important decisions and they all contribute to the same thing. And so for us, it's yes, it's a product, but hopefully at some point in the future, sustainability will be so normal that sustainability itself is not a, not something that makes a customer, yeah, purchase a product. And so even for us, what we've quickly realized in the market is sustainability is the thing that keeps, if the product works, that's what keeps people, coming back to you. Which of course, with a product that is, that runs on a subscription is very important from a business model perspective. But even beyond that. you, what we found is, for example, longer nights of sleep are so essential in that period of your life that you would basically do anything to, yeah, to get an hour or two more of sleep, more, yeah, two more hours of sleep per night. And so we've actually, from reading many hundreds of reviews that we've in the meantime gotten from consumers, that is, for example, their, conversion reason number one is to get an hour more of shut-eye. Morgan Mixon: And I can vouch for that. I've got a nine month old at home and, sleep is a premium. Talk about premium. That's what you want. I mean, you want to do better for the planet. But it's a secondary consideration for a lot of people. You're really, particularly with small children at home, and maybe I'm just projecting my own experience, but it's so day to survival, that you're looking always for hacks to how you can do it better or more efficiently. I think we all agree people just want what's best for their kids, and we're hoping that we can help provide them with a solution that takes the pain away of also having to think about some of your sustainable impacts, but you can kind of focus on what you really want to focus on most, which is raising healthy, happy, healthy children, and we try to smooth that out for them a little bit with, that premium products. Keith Anderson: You know, you mentioned a couple of things that I want to circle back to 1 is some of the other categories that have been disrupted. You know, razors are one that I think of, and I've seen it disrupted in two directions. There's sort of the, opening price point or discount disruption that companies like Dollar Shave Club made famous, I don't know, 10 years ago. But I also now increasingly see at the premium end, a, renaissance of double edged safety razors and, you know, a return to simpler designs with, you know, no plastic, and maybe the handle is at a premium versus what you're getting at the drugstore, but the cartridges are much, much cheaper and, the reason I mentioned that example is, the lifetime value to a customer over 5 or 10 years, you know, even though the upfront cost is more expensive, ultimately, they save a lot of money and some of those brands are actually marketing that way, you know, they're saying, you may flinch when you see the first price, but if you think about how many of those 4 cartridges you're buying every two weeks at the drugstore, it's not going to take too long for you to break even. So, is that at all part of the equation in this category? Do you see it becoming part of the equation? I think of things like subscription and how you can sometimes offer a consumer, some savings for locking in, you know, how are you finding managing the value equation with consumers is working? Morgan Mixon: You know, we are a startup. We are doing. Something new in our category, in our geography, right? So we have to educate customers about what that value is of premium. that's where the challenge of marketing comes in. That's, and that's, you know, education is, a big part of that. But what we find is once that value has been demonstrated, once that product is in somebody's hand and, indeed with Peachies, the second you hold it, you can tell it's a different type of product. Just from that first interaction with the products, we see it resonates, you know, the, those intangible benefits or kind of priceless benefits rather of, you know, the two hours more of sleep perhaps, is something that is worth the money. And I think where we ever get pushed back on price, you know, you look at things like we all make decisions all day long, right? About what we're going to buy or spend our time on or whatever. And I don't think it's any different in our category. You know, if you want to. If you can see the value in what you're investing in and indeed get a higher return on investment than it's something that we find people stick to and something with diapers. That's really brilliant is a perfect kind of model. If it's not broke, don't fix it kind of thing. So once people are in the door and loving the products, you're, with them through potty training and that's, something we've seen. and so we do have our, we do have our challenge of educating customers about what premium means, what the materials mean, you know, we have no dyes or fragrances. We have an all white design. We don't have little cute animals on them. We try to limit, of course, there's no harmful chemicals. We look at our CO2 impact, those kind of things. But at the end of the day, it's how does that customer feel when it's in their hand or after they've used that first pack? And, if you've got a product that can, stand up then that value is, demonstratable. And therefore, the price point also follows with that. So, the, momentum is there because that's starting to now emanate. We're starting to really get, you know, the kind of flywheel effect of like people sending me photos at a one year old's birthday party with our like little tote bag in the corner, hanging off somebody's stroller. And, you know, that shows us that it's starting to really resonate. Those messages that we're putting across are not only good for advertising and bringing people to the door, but are actually backed up by, by the experience that they're having. Keith Anderson: You mentioned, emissions and just looking at the website, you know, one of the claims is 40 percent lower emissions than conventional nappies. Maybe we can walk through, where those savings come from and, you may or may not have it at your fingertips, but anything we can cover about, emissions and the overall footprint of the category overall. You know, why from a climate or sustainability footprint, perspective, it's a category that sort of needs some innovation. Rima Suppan: It's a really interesting aspect of our category. The nappy category itself is quite, yeah, it's,  there's a lot of greenwashing in the industry, let's put it that way. I think there's a lot of industry where that, industries where that's happening, but for ours, I think it's especially interesting because we're dealing with children, we're dealing with, I mean, a parent or a child goes through about 5,000 to 7,000 nappies until they're potty trained. So we're talking about a lot of product, and, a lot that is being sent to landfills, for example, and a lot that is sitting around for many, years. And so for us, one of the, most important aspects when, launching Peachies was, transparency. And so it. Against kind of what's happening in the industry, we always said, "let's provide our parents or our customers with as much information about our product and about our company and the people behind that it, that, we're not a big conglomerate, but two female founders that have a, big dream that they want to make reality, provide them with all this information and then let them take the decision themselves for what they think is best for them and for their children." And so one of the things that we did quite early on in connection with the Amazon Sustainability Accelerator, was that we partnered with the European Union's Climate Innovation Organization called ClimateKick, and we wanted to verify our, yeah, CO2 footprint. And so, They verified that we save the equivalent of 93 tons of CO2 for every 1, 000 babies that use us, because that's quite hard to imagine. That's the equivalent of the weight of 17 elephants. Morgan Mixon: Just to add to that, you know, I think Rima and I on that transparency point is like, we know we're not perfect. we don't aim to convey that to parents. What we want to do is just empower them in their decision making. So, you know, we show our ingredients lists. We are very clear about what's not in our diapers. We're very transparent that we still have some plastic in there. You know, most brands do. And they'll kind of ignore that, like, it's in things like adhesives or, or elastics, things like that. But, you know, we made a conscious decision, for example, to include it in our, include a waistband on our product because it has such a substantial impact on the product fits and how efficient it is in doing its job. And so what we try to do is, you know, of course, benchmark ourselves and make smart decisions on materials. And, you know, things like our super absorbent polymer that's in our absorbent pad, you know, we use a more efficient material. So we use 20 percent less than other brands without sacrificing the product's performance, the fluff pulp that's also with that SAP is, from a hundred percent sustainably managed forests. But we still use a waistband, and we still, are, want to make sure that, you know, parents know that, and so that we can empower them to make those good decisions, but for us, it's like, if you're in our products, we want you to know why you're there, and if it's working for you, great, and know that if you trust in us, and spend your time with us, we're always looking to innovate, and reinvest in our product design, and fuel R&D, and push our category to new heights, but always maintaining that, that design philosophy of, bring a brilliant product to market first and make sure it works and does its job. And the rest we'll continue to figure out. Rima Suppan: One important aspect that we haven't even mentioned yet is that of course, sustainability has more angles to it than the ecological side. it is also, there's an economic side, which of course, as a Yeah, for profit business, you need to keep in mind, but then there's also the social side, and that is something that is, sits very close to our hearts, and we're, actually supporting Save the Children, or have supported them since, since the very beginning, because we think they're a brilliant organization, and support with that family's in need. because we've also learned very early on that, the first a thousand days are really what define a child's development, and, the quality of the nutrition, the sleep, that the, yeah, the environment they're in can can really have a huge impact on their, IQ and on their, yeah, on their life as an adult. So for us, it's, we view, as we mentioned, sustainability very holistically. And so the social aspect is also part of that. Keith Anderson: Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode. Well, it sounds like an exciting time at Peachies and I wish you luck. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us. Morgan Mixon: It's been great. Thank you so much, Keith. Rima Suppan: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.  Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of Decarbonizing Commerce. Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=lnq20rk8 [https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=lnq20rk8]

The Perks of Beanless Coffee with Jaxie Friedman of Atomo Coffee

Host Keith Anderson is joined by Jaxie Friedman, Sustainability Manager for Atomo Coffee. Together, they discuss the innovative approach Atomo takes towards creating sustainable coffee. Jaxie delves into the environmental challenges facing the coffee industry, including emissions and deforestation, and how Atomo's upcycled ingredients contribute to reducing their carbon footprint. The conversation also explores the complexities of measuring and managing these impacts, emphasizing the importance of maintaining product quality while making sustainable choices. Learn more about Jaxie Friedman: * Link to Atomo Coffee [https://www.atomocoffee.com/]’s website * Link to Jaxie Friedman’s LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaxiefriedman] To listen to the full episode join our Plus or Pro memberships at decarbonize.co: * https://decarbonize.co/member-benefits/ [https://decarbonize.co/member-benefits/] 👈 If you enjoyed this episode then please: * Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decarbonizing-commerce/id1700565143] * Follow and rate on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5WSVAdSAoZF27txma8D6rn] Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co [http://decarbonize.co] TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability. I'm Keith Anderson. This is the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. And my guest today is Jaxie Friedman, Sustainability Manager for Atomo Coffee, which is a producer of both beanless and hybrid, some bean, some no bean, coffee. Which is, you know, one of the most interesting categories that I think is exposed to climate as a business impact, and their approach to it is really worth being aware of and studying. And so I'll tell you a bit about why, and then we'll meet Jaxie. You know, firstly, coffee is one of these categories that is not among the highest emission categories you'll find in the supermarket, but it is you know, not at the low end. And so on the mitigation side of things, that is, you know, what can we do, what do we need to do to lower the emissions profile at a category level? Coffee and, cocoa are categories that are pretty interesting to look at. On the flip side though, as you've heard in other conversations in, you know, the case of olive oil is one example, it's one of the categories that is exposed to some of the disruption and risk of more extreme weather and higher temperatures. And so, you know, starting with targeting coffee as a category to go innovate in and innovating through a lens of both you know, producing a product that people want to drink, and choose to drink that also has a lower environmental footprint and is less exposed to the disruption of more extreme weather is a pretty interesting case study. And Jaxie has played a big role in a lot of the decisions that the company has made from a sustainability perspective. She's got a really deep understanding of everything that I've sort of set up here, and, I really enjoyed meeting and speaking with her, and I think you will too. So, let's meet Jaxi Friedman of Atomo Coffee. Jaxie, great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us for the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. Jaxie Friedman: So great to be here. Thanks for having me. Keith Anderson: So I think for those that maybe are less familiar with Atomo, maybe we could start with just, in your words, what is Atomo and what do you do? Jaxie Friedman: Yeah. so, Atomo is all about redefining the coffee landscape with beanless coffee. We make a coffee that's crafted out of high quality superfoods and upcycled ingredients to make coffee, something that tastes just like coffee, but without any green coffee beans. That's why we call ourself beanless coffee. And a little bit more about me and what I do at Atomo. So I'm our sustainability manager here. So a big part of why Atomo exists is that coffee supply chains are threatened by climate change and coffee has a massive environmental footprint. It's one of the kind of plant-based commodities that is most directly tied to deforestation and other major things that are, you know, influencing, changing climate and all of the negative effects that come with that. So, sustainability is kind of really core to why Atomo exists. And so, as a sustainability manager here, I help us to kind of quantify our impact and think about, how we can incorporate sustainability into different components of our business. We just recently released, our environmental footprint of our espresso grounds, and when you compare beanless coffee to conventional coffee, our espresso grounds uses 70 percent less farmland, which means, more forest and grasslands that are able to be preserved, and that we cause 83 percent fewer carbon emissions. Yeah, so I'm really excited that we've been able to kind of put some proof out there that our beanless coffee, Does some good stuff for the planet. Keith Anderson: Well, I mean, those are some just incredible data points. Maybe we can talk for a minute about how you arrive at those kinds of, estimates. You know, I know that, there's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of variables and there are some standards, but not everything is standardized. So how do you arrive at those kinds of estimates? Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, that's a great question. So, we did the calculations in partnership with a company called HowGood. They are a, they provide a data platform that allows folks to calculate their, environmental impact in a variety of different areas, and we've really focused on kind of the carbon component of it, and how good works with a lot of the globally established methodologies that allow you to kind of analyze the footprint of a product from the raw materials through to end of life. So, it's called a product environmental footprint, but it's similar to what you'd think of as a life cycle analysis in that it's analyzing the footprint of various different components of the product's life cycle. Keith Anderson: We know HowGood, they're going to be providing climate labels for the meals at our summit in September.  Jaxie Friedman: And Ah, I love that! Yeah, they're doing some incredible work, and they've been a great partner for us. Keith Anderson: how deep in the weeds do you personally get in understanding what drives emissions up or down, and to what extent does that then influence decisions that the company makes about future formulations and sourcing decisions, you know, any of those sort of commercial considerations? Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, so for the first part of your question, how deep in the weeds, I go pretty deep in the weeds, partially because as I mentioned, we're not using green coffee beans. We use a variety of other plant-based ingredients to create something that tastes exactly identical to coffee, but it means we have a more diverse supply chain. We use some ingredients that are readily available and others that are a little bit more niche and have less established supply chains. For ingredients that are, less commonly studied, you may need to incorporate in some proxies, understanding the footprint of one commodity and using that as a reference point for another because it hasn't been studied. So I've had to go pretty deep into the weeds to make sure that, you know, we're using appropriate proxies in terms of understanding the impact of our ingredients. And also when we're thinking about, it's not just at the ingredient level, but also from a, region and kind of looking at the specifics and the comparison of, you know, if we were to source something from India versus Kenya versus wherever, the impacts of those growing practices are going to be really different. And so, we've been excited to be able to use the Lattice platform that HowGood offers, to be able to take that kind of next step to thinking about how it influences our product development. So, because this was our first official product environmental footprint we launched with HowGood, we've really been able to now use the learnings coming off of that to start to implement some practices so we can think about how it influences product development down the line. You kind of need to know your baseline to be able to make improvements for the future. And we've been using it to inform, when we're thinking about if we want to source a new ingredient from a different location, should, are there lower impact places that make sense to get certain things? We've also been using it as a reference point for when we're considering new ingredients within our formula, not necessarily in terms of saying like "it must hit this threshold to be in the formula," but thinking about, "okay, which are ingredients that are hot spots in our formula and what could be some alternatives?" and thinking about, kind of the bigger picture of with, sort of, some kind of guardrails of what the footprints could be. It allows us to kind of make more strategic decisions about, you know, where we're able to improve our footprint and what are the levers that we can pull. Keith Anderson: Well, Jaxie Friedman: Happy to get into deeper questions parts of that, if you'd like. Keith Anderson: I would love to, and you know, maybe we can weave into the discussion something that you also said, which was that from a taste and flavor perspective, it's functionally indistinguishable from conventional bean coffee, beaned coffee. I don't know how I would describe it, but, you know, that's something that I think is really important and something that we hear a lot of brand manufacturers discussing more and more, which is we're trying to balance these trade offs in essentially four areas, from what I can see. one is sort of quality, whether that's defined as taste, nutrition, you name it. Another is emissions profile. Another is how reliably can we get it, and the final is what's it cost. So, you know, when you said it, it tastes the same, it immediately had me think about what's that dynamic look like inside the company when you're getting this new data and then meeting with the product development or innovation team and thinking about, okay, well, this might lower the footprint, but then we've got to consider the cost, and we've got to consider the taste, and we've, you know, Jaxie Friedman: Yeah. so I'll just say outright from, like, kind of the broader CPG perspective and most of the sustainable food and beverage companies, like the even the sustainability people who are kind of owning the footprint part of things, I feel like most folks are aligned that ultimately the taste is the most important thing, right? If, you know, even if a product is better for the planet, but it's not quite as good, it's just really hard for get to get folks to buy it and to get bought into it, right? And so there needs to be these fundamental benefits, whether it's flavor or health benefits that people are seeking out, that I think have to be, of the most importance to, when creating a new product, especially a product that's an alternative to something that people already know and love, right? People are really passionate about their morning coffee. It's part of their habit, their routine, and they're not going to, at least most folks aren't going to just, you know, swap it out for a cup of tea or you know, some other alternative. And so. I think with that in mind, you know, we always discuss internally that like the flavor has to be right. And so that I would say is the most important thing. And I think that we've been really successful with, because I think our products tastes really good. But with that in mind, I think, you know, as we're looking at new product development and also as we're looking at scaling, I think all of those things that you just mentioned are important, right? We have to think about, what is our price gonna be on shelf? How does it affect our footprint, and how does that connect to kind of the sustainability story that is core to our brand? I think all of these things do kind of come into play. it's not necessarily my scope of work that is kind of owning that decision making framework, but I'd say all four of those components do come to the table when we're looking at the launch of a product. I'd say The kind of root of our ideation is coming from that, like, let's nail down a great tasting product. It needs to taste good, have the right mouthfeel, all of these things. I'd say, like, that is the driver of our innovation. And then because we have a really passionate team that cares about environmental components, we weave it in at any stage of the process that we can so that as we're identifying flavor notes that are really good that we want in our product, we can think about how those individual components can be a little bit better, a slightly lower footprint.  Keith Anderson: Makes a ton of sense. And you had mentioned you could go even deeper on some of the footprint analysis. You know, you mentioned the location that you're sourcing from as one variable. What, are some of the other factors? Jaxie Friedman: We're really, I think this is really important among a lot of different kind of natural products. There's certain things that I think are foundational criteria. If you want to be in certain retail spaces, you know, being non-GMO among many kind of natural food products is important. We like to source organic ingredients when we can, but it's not, one of our kind of leading criteria. I think there's some other components,  I think the jury is up in terms of, you know, for instance, organic. We kind of were taking a look at our ingredient, one of our ingredients that is organic certified compared to normal ones. And we were like, why doesn't the footprint change that much? And what's interesting is certain things that we would expect to be better from a carbon footprint standpoint aren't always, right? Because with an organic product, you may have slight decreases in yield, even if there's lower input of carbon fertilizers or whatever it is. So there's some interesting nuance there that I've been exploring as I kind of dig into specific ingredients. For us, I'd say one of the leading drivers around sustainability with our sourcing is upcycling. So our foundational ingredient is date pits, which we rescue from farmers waste streams in the Coachella Valley in California. And food waste is just a huge problem in our country and it leads to, a much larger footprint because agriculture has tremendous ripples on our ecosystems. It has a huge carbon footprint and we grow a lot of stuff that just ends up in the trash, right? And it's really unfortunate. And so by being a product that is certified upcycled, with the date bits being that core upcycled ingredient, we also see that being a huge lever in terms of understanding how we are doing good for the planet  because it is improving, it is reducing the methane emissions that may come from some of those, those pits ending up in landfill, but it's also creating a new commodity out of something that wouldn't have been used in the past. So you have the avoided emissions, and then you also have this new opportunity. Where if you're using less coffee that has a higher footprint and then you're also rescuing this waste stream to make that same cup of coffee, there's kind of dual benefit there. And I'd say in terms of upcycling, our core ingredient, the date pits is upcycled, but we're also looking to incorporate in as many upcycled ingredients into new formulations as possible. So I think that's definitely something that is kind of core to our sourcing priorities. And we're continuing to develop our coffee to use more and more of those types of ingredients. Keith Anderson: Yeah. I see, upcycling as a industry, you know, it's been a trend for a while, but it's actually really interesting to see how it's formalizing with the certification and associations and it's becoming a more prominent feature of a lot of brands and how they're coming to market. Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, the Upcycled Food Association has done some amazing work with kind of rallying folks together around, I think, this kind of overarching, concept. And I think what's been really exciting is to see the ripples coming out of that. So, the Upcycled certification, the number of companies that are getting that certification, which is basically like a proof of that your product has a certain quantity of ways of, diverted waste streams going into that product. The number of companies getting that certification is growing. I think we also see, you know, there's been ripples in terms of food waste policy. The EPA's food waste hierarchy now has upcycling as one of the kind of better ways in which you can mitigate food waste, which wasn't there before. So it's been really exciting to kind of be in the upcycled world, while this momentum is building. Keith Anderson: You know, to take a bit of a step back, and I probably should have asked this question earlier in the conversation, but I think you've done a great job unpacking some of the ways that Atomo itself is producing products that are good for the planet. Maybe it would be helpful to listeners to spend a couple minutes just talking about the coffee business itself. I mean, you mentioned, you know, clearing forests or using farmland are a couple of the, environmental impacts that the conventional approach to producing coffee has, but I think it would be interesting just to highlight why this is a category that was interesting to build a brand and a business like this in. Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm happy to dig in deeper there.  So coffee, I'll say kind of the foundational thing around it is that the coffee market is growing and simultaneously the amount of land that is suitable to grow coffee is shifting and shrinking due to climate change. So I'd say there's this broader issue, where by 2050, 50 percent of the land currently suitable to grow coffee will be able to grow coffee. And so then there's these ripples of, issues for coffee supply chains where, the growing locations are going to need to change, which often means that farms are going to have to move to higher altitudes, there's going to, in association with those increased altitudes, there also happens to be a lot more forests in those landscapes, which means there's likely to be a lot more deforestation. And so that's a huge issue, and coffee companies, I think, are starting to pay a little more attention to the fact that, regardless of coffee's footprint, which I can talk about in a second, just thinking about, you know, being able to have a cup of coffee is going to be harder and harder, especially because coffee demand is increasing, right? So if we have more coffee that needs to be consumed and a shrinking space to grow it, that's a huge issue.  In terms of the coffee footprint, I think the deforestation is one of the biggest drivers of coffee's footprint. When we did our calculations with HowGood, we also created a benchmark competitor, which was supposed to be representing global Arabica coffee production, which include 13 of the top coffee producing countries as those source regions and their kind of estimated impact. And what we found with this conventional coffee benchmark was that 58 percent of those emissions were coming from some of that, deforestation component. And, that's a huge portion of the coffee life cycle. Of course, there's other things that are contributing to that other remaining percentage, right? That's fossil fuel usage on farms to be able to grow the green coffee beans. It's the processing to roast the coffee beans. It's the transportation to bring coffee from, you know, different regions where it's grown, like Brazil or, or different parts of Africa over to the places where it's most often consumed, right? In Europe or the United States. So there's so many different components that are contributing to the high carbon footprint, but I'd say the most critical one is deforestation. And it's actually driven a lot of attention. Coffee is one of seven commodities that recently has, been looped in, the, to a recent study that was basically looking at how these were the main drivers of agricultural deforestation, these 7 commodities. It was coffee as well as a few other products. I don't know all of them off the top of my head, but cocoa, paper pulp products, beef, of course, various different things. And these commodities are the key drivers around cutting forests in places like the Amazon. And so that's a huge problem. It's also driven a lot of change. There's recent regulation in Europe. It's called the EUDR, which is around deforestation regulation and forcing certain supply chains, such as coffee, to now show traceability, that their coffee is not being sourced from places tied to deforestation. There's increasing attention to companies that are setting science-based targets, for instance, to also pay attention to, you know, they have to, if you're setting a science-based target in partnership with, or with like the new FLAG, which is like a forest, land, and agricultural, might not have the acronym exactly right,  You  Keith Anderson: nailed it. Jaxie Friedman: Footprint. Okay. Keith Anderson: my screen. You got it. You got Jaxie Friedman: yeah, so the. FLAG footprint is now being, it's starting to be required among, companies that have a heavy agricultural footprint and within that flag requirement is, preventing deforestation. I think it's beginning in 2025. It's like a commitment to have no deforestation in their supply chains. And this is really hard to execute because coffee. It's mostly grown by lots of smallholder farmers who don't have access to certain technology and ways of tracking these things. So the coffee supply chain is really complicated and, I think climate change is threatening coffee, and simultaneously because of coffee's footprint. I think it's created additional pressure at the legislative level, which I think is exciting but also going to be a huge challenge for coffee companies to meet to be able to prevent, to, prevent the deforestation that is so tightly connected to coffee supply chains. Those are just a few of the ways that I think coffee influences, supply chains, but happy to, dig into some other areas too, if you want, but I could go on and on about this. No, that  Keith Anderson: was exactly what I was hoping to cover there.  Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode.  Keith Anderson: Well, I really appreciate you joining me, Jaxie. It was super interesting. Thanks so much for joining the show. Jaxie Friedman: You're so welcome.  Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of decarbonizing commerce. Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=lnq201m8 [https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=lnq201m8]