Oct 7, 2015

By: Laurie Gethin, Director of Education, Food Marketing Institute 
ESD Sustainability Blog Image

Last week at the FMI Energy & Store Development Conference (ESD) there was a clear theme that permeated many of the presentations: sustainability. Consumers are becoming increasingly more focused on sustainability. And grocery stores are listening and responding. Throughout the conference, speakers discussed ways to incorporate sustainable practices into energy, refrigeration and store design. Topics included the generation of HFO refrigerants, recommendations for 50 percent energy reduction, store designs that reduce overall utility consumption, and much more.

So you’re doing all this wonderful sustainability work, but are your stakeholders even aware? Aaron Daly, Global Energy Coordinator from Whole Foods Market, and Holly Carr from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Partnerships  joined together at ESD 2015 and provided four suggestions to help drive awareness of your sustainability work:

  1. Educate Employees – Use your internal store communications to discuss and promote your sustainability efforts. Hold trainings so staff can become knowledgeable and empowered about your sustainability programs.
  2. Engage Customers - Promote your efforts in store design and displays. Tie your sustainability objectives into each store’s local or community objectives. For example, you could incorporate a natural material found in the community into your store design.
  3. Incorporate the Media – Utilize both internal social media platforms as well as partnerships with local media outlets to promote your efforts.
  4. Leverage Partnerships – Partners can act as key amplifiers of your store’s messages. One such example of a successful partnership is Whole Foods Market’s participation in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Initiative. This program kicked off in 2011 with the goal of making buildings 20 percent more energy efficient over the next 10 years. Participating companies set a public goal of at least 20 percent energy savings and work together to share best practices for reducing energy use in their stores.

See photos from the conference on FMI’s Flicker page and learn more at on Energy and Store Development Conference webpage.