"Carbon Maps' SaaS platform has enabled us to assess the environmental impact of over 600 recipes and create our own environmental label, the 'Carbo Score'. Thanks to their analysis, we have been able to identify the recipes and ingredients in our portfolio that have the greatest impact on the environment. The platform has also enabled us to link these results to our sales, and thus isolate the recipes that need to be reworked as a priority." — Juliette Delannoy, CSR Manager at Foodles
Foodles is a dynamic French scale-up revolutionizing workplace dining with its innovative, sustainable, and tech-driven catering solutions. Specializing in connected, on-site services, Foodles offers a range of modern options, including smart fridges stocked with fresh, seasonal meals, customizable corporate dining experiences, and convenient click-and-collect services. Their approach emphasizes flexibility, balanced nutrition, and environmental responsibility, underpinned by certifications like B Corp.
In line with their mission to minimize impact on the environment, Foodles explored introducing environmental labeling for their recipes. This initiative builds on their implementation of the Nutri-Score in 2022 to promote healthier food choices for the employees and guests of their B2B clients.
Now, Foodles is taking transparency a step further by providing clear information on the environmental impact of every menu item, helping diners make more informed, sustainable dining decisions.
Since 2020, Foodles has been committed to measuring and reducing their corporate carbon footprint, recognizing that—like most in the food service industry—a significant portion of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions originates from purchased goods. In their 2022 carbon footprint analysis, 62.8% of emissions were attributed to the ingredients they source. This insight highlighted the need for a more detailed, granular approach to emissions tracking at the recipe level, allowing Foodles to identify and act on key reduction levers where it is most consequential to them.
Coupled with this insight and the need to calculate and communicate the environmental impact of each menu item in anticipation of the upcoming "Affichage Environnemental" regulation in France, Foodles sought out a solution.
“It’s important for us to be ahead of regulations and to differentiate ourselves in the market but at the same time, environmental labeling is in line with our strategy of working on and improving the impact of our recipes.“ — Juliette Delannoy, CSR Manager at Foodles
The challenge for Foodles was clear: in the absence of an official system for environmental labeling, they needed to provide a reliable and transparent environmental score that could meet both customer expectations and future regulatory demands.
Foodles’ requirements included:
Checking all these boxes, Foodles partnered with Carbon Maps to develop their own proprietary environmental labeling system, the Carbo Score. Putting this in place allows Foodles to automatically measure the environmental impact of each menu item, enabling them to communicate the scores transparently to their clients’ diners.
“We chose to work with Carbon Maps for two main reasons: their undeniable expertise when it comes to assessing the environmental impact of food and understanding sustainability challenges in the industry, as well as their responsiveness and availability, which helped us set up and launch the project under optimal conditions. We also appreciate that the evolution of their solution is based on, and even co-created with and for their clients.” — Juliette Delannoy, CSR Manager at Foodles
One of the primary challenges faced by actors in Food Service like Foodles is the lack of access to granular data from upstream suppliers. With an average of more than 80% of a typical food service player’s carbon footprint coming from Scope 3, it’s quite a puzzle to figure out how to access real reduction levers. That is until carrying out LCA at Scale. Here’s how Carbon Maps supports Foodles:
Foodles have the advantage of knowing their actual recipes. After securely collecting their data, Carbon Maps’ generative AI algorithm matches the ingredients of every dish with their own proprietary database of more than 12,000 emission factors. It’s important to note that food inputs in a carbon footprint analysis are typically evaluated using around 50 emission factors only. Once the matching is done, the LCAs are automatically carried out on the platform.
When exact recipes are available, Carbon Maps is able to apply a more granular assessment. Let’s take pesto pasta as an example. We will not just apply the emission factor for the dish pasta or pesto pasta, but model the impact for each ingredient of pesto pasta, taking into account the specificities of each supply chain. This means we use the emission factors for (1) pasta produced from wheat, (2) pine nuts harvested from forests, (3) basil and (4) garlic grown in agriculture, (4) parmesan sourced from dairy production, and (5) olive oil evaluated via its olive cultivation to calculate the impact of the pesto pasta dish in its entirety.
Once the assessments are complete, the Carbon Maps platform is able to display on Foodles’ dashboard their most emissive dishes down to the least emissive, as well as indicate which ingredients contribute the most to a dish's carbon footprint and water consumption. With this, Foodles is able to discern a Carbo Score for each of their dishes in an automated manner. So far, Carbon Maps has assessed 648 of Foodles’ recipes!
To make the message easy to understand, Foodles’ Carbo Score is classified in three levels: Low, Medium, and High. The classifications were defined based on what is known to be the average impact of a meal in France, according to ADEME, which is 3.65 kgCO2e/kg.
Today, the Carbo Score is displayed on all Foodles menus visible from the smart fridges and the Foodles application.
If you are curious to learn more about how to leverage Carbon Maps LCA at Scale for your sustainability and communication efforts, get in touch to schedule a demo.
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