Our approach
Frameworks & Tools of our trade
innovative tools to help you solve sustainability problems and prioritise solutions!
Behavioural Science
Want to increase sales of sustainable options in your restaurant or café? We can help. We draw from behavioural science tips and tricks to design menus that nudge customers towards healthier and more sustainable choices. For example by placing sustainable options at the top of the menu or in a more visible space, we can help you shift sales towards dishes that are better for the planet. And if you’re looking for more inspiration, we’ll help you deliver a pilot from the WRI playbook, filled with great ideas on how to use nudges and defaults to make a real impact. We also take inspiration from The Behaviour Change Wheel (Michie et al., 2014) Let us help you make a difference, one menu at a time.
Omni Framework
The Omni Framework can be better understood through its Charter and is the product of Omni Action’s global, professional, 600+ strong community’s hive mind which represents the food system at all levels of the supply chain. On behalf of all food system actors, the Charter reflects global unifying agreement of what constitutes sustainability in agrifood – namely across Labour rights, Land sovereignty, Nutrition, Food safety and Environmental impact. A corporate or political policy, a food label, are not “Sustainable” unless they capture measurements across all five of these topics. We approach sustainability in food systems via the UN SDGs and United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We work with the Omni team to deliver UN-standard life cycle sustainability assessments. This is a a credible multi-criteria scoring system for full sustainability impacts that align to global food systems frameworks. You can read more about the Omni Action Charter here.
Food Made Good
Sustainability in foodservice is a delicious and diverse feast, and the Food Made Good framework hailing from the UK, is the perfect recipe for success. With its three key ingredients of Sourcing, Society & Environment, it’s a holistic approach that will elevate your business to new heights. Whether you’re serving up locally sourced ingredients, promoting high welfare meat, or inviting community groups to dine with you, the framework captures all the good you’re doing. And, it’s sure to spark your creativity and inspire you to explore new areas of sustainability you hadn’t thought of before! Check out the three pillars here: Sourcing, Society & Environment
A Strategy Sprint
Before you dive headfirst into the world of sustainability, take a step back and run a team sprint to align on your goals. Be crystal clear on your purpose and ambition. This will inform your food strategy and give you a clear vision of what success looks like. Explore the big picture, the end point and the order in which things need to be done. Identify the big projects for the next few months or years and understand how your brand, product or service fits into the larger sustainable food ecosystem. Ask if the market is ready for what you’re offering and come up with a plan to overcome any uncertainties before launching your product or campaign. Get your team aligned around a clear strategy and take action with a sustainability roadmap in hand. We take inspiration from Jake Knapp’s Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Five Days – a method also used by the likes of Facebook and Google.
3 Horizons
Thinking about the future means embracing change and learning to think differently. Emerging changes will challenge our current assumptions, and over time, our decisions, policies, and products will become obsolete. So, how do we futureproof our thinking and planning? The Three Horizons Framework (3H) coined by Sharpe in Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope (2013) is a powerful tool that helps us make our assumptions explicit and explore emerging change as a way to reframe our thinking, our desires, and our actions. It looks back at history, forward at the possibilities and creates actions that bridge the gap between today and tomorrow. The question is, what does your future vision look like? And how can 3H help you get there?
Workshops
Sustainability challenges can be overwhelming, where do you even begin? That’s where we come in. We specialise in both delivering but also planning, guiding, and managing workshops to help teams tackle their identified challenges. Using frameworks like Food Made Good (for foodservice) or Omni Framework (for food products) and innovative tools such as the 4Cs (AJ&Smart) and the Diamond of Participatory Decision Making, we design action-oriented decision making workshops for food businesses on their sustainability journey, that help teams make progress. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “In preparation for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Let us guide you through the planning process and help you achieve your sustainability goals.
Facilitation
As experienced facilitators, our role is to help you and your team reach your end goals by improving the way you identify problems and make decisions to solve challenges. We understand that teamwork can often be hindered by politics and circular discussions, so we strive to make collaborative work feel frictionless by making sure every person in the room gets heard. We also know that conflicts can arise, so we are here to mediate different points of view and maintain objectivity at all times. By allowing the team to focus on the challenge at hand, instead of worrying about the decision-making process, we enable teams to do their best work. We also help the team articulate key ideas by using fitting facilitation techniques. Together, we’ll reach the goals you’ve set out to achieve. We’ll be the guide, not the hero.
Materiality Assessments
Unlock the power of food sustainability success with our ESG and sustainability evaluation. We’ll help you identify the most impactful issues for your organisation, and align them with the relevant framework. We’re not here to change your brand, or ask you to tackle all of the issues, but rather to empower you to identify those that are material to your business, and seek possibilities to operate it in the most ethical, environmentally conscious, and socially responsible way possible. Let us help you uncover the hidden gems of sustainable growth for your business.
Systems Thinking
Join us in creating a vibrant and nourishing food future. We know that the food system needs a makeover and we’re here to help you play your part. Systems thinking is the key to tackling complex issues like the food system. It helps us understand how all the pieces fit together, and how we can make a positive impact. By using tools like systems mapping and stakeholder mapping and resources like The Design Thinking Workbook (Lewrick et al., 2018) among others we’ll help you see the big picture and identify the most powerful change points in your business supply chain. Together, we’ll zoom in and out, uncover patterns, and find the leverage points that will set you on the path to a regenerative future.
Systemic Design
Are you grappling with a complex challenge that doesn’t fit neatly into one department’s purview? Let us help you bring together a diverse group of stakeholders, including citizens and businesses, to tackle the problem head-on. We’ll support you with combinations of systems thinking and design thinking workshop tools to co-create solutions and form a dedicated team to identify how to implement them. Together, we’ll turn messy problems into tangible actions for improvement. Here’s a great resource by the Design Council.