Celebrating the Milestones: 100 Million Pounds and B Corp Certification
A letter from our CEO
I grew up in the grocery industry: starting as a part time dairy stocker in college and ending as the head of a company on the East Coast doing over $8 billion annually. I’ve seen a lot of amazing things over the years, but I’ve also seen a lot of not-so-wonderful things.
In a grocery store backroom you get a close look at the food waste compactor – a visceral experience, you can literally smell it. It’s a really tangible part of our food waste crisis. As a store manager, you see the intangible side because there’s a line item in your budget – what it costs to have that compactor emptied. By the time you’re running a 200 store grocery chain it’s one of your biggest monthly operational expenses. I wondered why we couldn’t just stop ordering too much, and why we couldn’t sell it before it had to be thrown away. That’s when I first discovered Flashfood.
I learned then that doing the right thing for humanity can also be good for business. Isn’t that inspiring? It’s not always about building the next big flashy idea, it’s about using the things that are available right now and making something better out of them.
That is the ethos that inspired us to pursue Flashfood’s B Corp certification. By joining this global community, we sit alongside Patagonia and Warby Parker, organizations I consider to be best-in-class stewards of good business. As certified B Corp, we recognize the power of impact created by economic responsibility. Flashfood is a good fit for this group because our business is designed so that our commercial success equals mission success. The more partners we onboard, the more available and accessible our product is. This means there’s more affordable food available, and the more we sell the more we divert from landfill.
Which leads to our next milestone: Flashfood has passed the mark of 100 million pounds of food diverted from landfills. This means we’ve served more than 83 million affordable meals to families across North America – across thousands of communities, 20 American states and 10 Canadian provinces. I’m incredibly proud of our retail partners and the store teams who make this possible.
Sharing these milestones with the world does not mean we’re satisfied with our achievements. In fact, it’s the opposite. Celebrating milestones holds us accountable to push ourselves further, and it’s a promise that along the way, we’ll share our progress with the world.
With you,
Nicholas Bertram
Chief Executive Officer
Flashfood Inc.
