How to open a sustainable grocery store

I originally met Caitlin Sullivan when she asked me to handle the garbage for the cafe Honey Hi. She was eager to find a food waste solution that was more local and the community compost that I ran was just around the corner from the shop. It was a match made in smelly, earthy, worm-y heaven.

Flash forward a couple years and Caitlin is now spearheading the sustainability efforts at the newly-opened LA Grocery & Cafe, a mega-thoughtfully-managed grocery store in the heart of Los Angeles, and I’m one of three community composters she’s partnered with to ensure that all of their food waste is handled locally. I do pick ups weekly and, as I’ve gotten to the know the team, I’ve come to be truly in awe of the degree of their commitment to the environment. Everybody I’ve met cares so much.

I’ve also learned a lot.

For example, I had no idea how wasteful the average grocery store could be. But I also had no idea just how many steps are available to be taken—right now, today—in order to do better.

So I invited Caitlin to sit down and have a conversation with me. I wanted to document the things she had done to build out a more sustainable grocery store, in the hopes that we could create a kind of case study. One of the biggest takeaways from our interview? There are opportunities to do something better for the planet everywhere you look. No matter where you work or who you are, you are one degree away from something you could do or some positive influence you could have.

It’s heartening to know that.

Want to introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you’re doing?

I’m Caitlin Sullivan. I am one of the founders and team members here at LA Grocery & Cafe. This space has been a grocery store since the 90s. The person who purchased the building decided they wanted to keep it as a grocery store and we were approached, basically, to envision how that would work. As restaurant people, we understood the cafe portion. We had a lot of ideas about food systems and sourcing, though, and we felt we could apply that to the grocery element, too.

Grocery stores typically waste about 30% of what they bring in. That’s just kind of stat across the board that people accept. But as restaurant people, we didn’t think that made sense. It didn’t make sense from an environmental OR a financial perspective.

That’s when we realized that the cafe and the grocery were two things that could work very symbiotically. In fact, it doesn’t really even make sense to have a grocery store unless you have a cafe. Now, we have teams dedicated to watching the flow of products and understanding where things are at on the shelves and in the produce section, so that we can know when and how to utilize them in the cafe—in order to ultimately reduce our waste.

A lot of grocery stores have cafes now, but they’re usually treated as very separate entities. We are trying to make them work together.

I didn’t realize the cafe was an intentional decision for managing food waste. Are you able to unpack the 30% statistic and talk about where waste tends to occur in grocery stores?

I want to be careful to clarify that we try not to talk about it as “waste.” We don’t want to give the impression we are using old food. It’s more like… we have this thing that has a sell-by date in two days. We can use that thing now and have people eat it today if we put it in the cafe, in a situation where—if we don’t—it might end up going bad on the shelf and getting thrown away.

We anticipate what could become waste and turn it into something that people can enjoy today.

That’s super cool. It’s proactive management instead of reactive … uh… landfill.

Yes, exactly.

A lot of the waste in that 30% statistic is in produce and the most perishable products. That’s what we monitor the most closely. But we’ve also curated the pantry goods. Everything we are selling we would be proud to also sell in the cafe. It’s all stuff we would really use and even feature. For example, if people aren’t noticing this beautiful Indian simmer sauce, we may feature it in a recipe in the cafe so that people will try it, get excited about it, and buy it.

We were also incredibly naive about grocery, of course. But I think that’s helped us develop something that could be really different.

Was sustainability always important to you or did it become important to you? Was there a revelatory moment?

It just all feels so connected to me. I don’t think of it as “sustainability.” It just feels like running a smart and efficient operation. It’s no different than how you would want to run your household. You’d want to make sure you’re not wasting the things you are buying.

Yeah, you don’t want to spend money just to throw a thing in the trash.

Yes, exactly!

Basically, the trajectory for me was being interested in health and nutrition and then realizing I was actually interested in soil and agriculture. And then realizing that, in order for those things to be sustainable, than these were the processes that you need to be engaged with… begins waving toward some bins near us.

Do you want to describe the thing that you’re waving at? 

Laughs. I’m waving at a compost bin. A “landfill” and recycling section.

Totally. Of course, grocery stores are made up of more than food. There are bags, packaging, and other places in the supply chain where sustainability could be a factor. Can you talk about some of the choices you made for packaging? And how you maybe introduced sustainability into some non-food areas?

We are always trying to look at the intersection of what works for people and what is actually sustainable. More often that not, we are looking to use materials like paper and wood. When we do need to use plastic, it’s because that’s what’s going to preserve the vegetable for the longest amount of time. That balancing act of what actually works and what is sustainable is always top of mind for me. Luckily, we are living in a great time in the sense that people are really trying to make more conscious, sustainable products for packaging and other stuff like that. There’s more options available at this point.

For example, these gestures to her drink are air carbon straws, which are made from Pacific sea algae. You’ll test them for us and make sure they’re breaking down properly. (Editor’s Note: yes, I will.)

It used to be really daunting for me to understand the nuances of packaging, but once I really dove into things, it felt more empowering than anything else. I’ve been to places where everything is in compostable plastic, but if you engage at all with the city—they don’t take that stuff. And it’s not breaking down in garden composts, for the most part. So, again, it’s that balancing act. Is it better to use plastic and make sure it gets recycled versus something that is not able to actually able to be biodegraded with the infrastructure we have available right now? I think so.

I think we’ve been fortunate that we have a frame of mind where we are excited by this. We’re also lucky that there are lots of good alternatives on the market. We’ve definitely had to resist some pushback, though. Like, we use wooden forks and knives. People sometimes hate them. But we’re going to keep using them, because it’s the best choice for the environment.

We do draw the line in certain places, though. For example, paper straws—for the most part—do not actually work for people. They do melt. They don’t actually last for the length of a drink. So we don’t use them.

It’s cool that you are navigating that tension, but hewing on the side of standing up for yourself—and the environment—a little bit. Can you share anything about your research process for packaging?

It really started when I started engaging with the municipal composting and landfill company we work with. What are they actually breaking down? What do they actually take? And then when you understand that, you can make choices about what packaging and other stuff to buy. For example, we do mostly paper, wood, and softer bioplastics that we know they can actually break down and not hard bioplastics, which they can’t break down yet. Just understanding that part of it was really important.

The next stage for me is always finding out which second-use plastics are available. That’s the next tier after compostable stuff. Can we use stuff that’s not virgin plastic? And if that’s not available, what are our best other options? It kind of goes in tiers. I feel like that’s been a process that’s been ongoing for years, at this point. And I think that that’s an important thing to understand.

A lot of onus has been put on the consumer for these things. You should know what to do with your compost or you should know what things to buy or not to buy or you should know what the best materials are. And, I think it’s the responsibility of the grocer or the business owner to say: “Let me help you.”

It’s my job to do the research and then provide you with the best option.

Great mission statement. Where have you decided to use recycled plastic?

In the produce round, right now, we’ve got soft bioplastic bags and paper bags. Those are the the best options. But when it comes to salad greens, those are in plastic, because that’s what is going to keep them good for the longest. Because it’s like, what’s worse? Constantly wasting the food or having some plastic? It’s all about those tradeoffs.

There is a really interesting bioplastic that is being made in Canada that I can’t quite get to the bottom of how it’s sourced yet. We found it at a market in Washington. It feels like plastic, but apparently it is breaking down and doesn’t have the porosity of most other soft bioplastics. I’m still in the research phase with it, though. But this is why we say we’re “exploring” food systems, because its not a stagnant thing. It’s going to continue to evolve. There will be things to learn and change. Hopefully, there will be a way to eliminate more of the virgin plastics and the single-use things. It will be an ongoing process.

It’s tempting as a business, or as someone existing within capitalism, to be “done.” To say: this is the business plan, this is how we source, and we’re done. Then you duplicate that and you do it over-and-over again and you increase exponentially in your growth.

But no, there will be waves. We will learn things and change things.

When you pick items to carry in stock is there an environmental standard you’re holding those to, as well?

Yes! We have unique standards for every one of the 66 categories of products on the shelves. 

Each category has an "at least" set of standards and a "ideally" set of standards.We have also have a buying guide for produce, wine, specialty cheese as well. These are the big questions we ask even before we get to the guide:

• WHERE is this product produced? how does it reach us? Closer to us is ideal.

• HOW does the product use resources on the land its grown or produced on? Using minimal resources or putting resources back into the land is ideal.

• WHO is growing/producing this product, how are they treated and treating people? More transparency into operations is ideal.

• WHAT are the processes and additives required to make this product? Less additives is ideal.

• Once the product is produced/consumed, WHAT DOES IT LEAVE BEHIND? can we use whats left behind? If we can use or compost whats left behind, thats ideal.

• Does the product have a positive NUTRITIONAL IMPACT for those consuming it? Ideally, YES.

• What makes this product EXCITING? Local, Authentic, Organic, Inspiring Business Practices, Enduring Staple, Value

• Is it the best we can do to meet the needs above? If not, can we find new sources or push the manufacturer to do better?

Did you want to speak at all to the community engagement efforts you wanted to have around your sustainability initiatives?

I don’t know what those things will be yet! We’re still figuring out who is coming and what the community needs and what’s helpful to them. We are not trying to impose our values or vision on a community where we are brand new. We are just trying to politely introduce ourselves, show what we have to offer, and see what resonates for people. I would really like to do more education, though, and work on what you and I have talked about, which is some sort of resource or ‘zine, and giving back the compost that we create. So I feel like there’s a lot of different ways to do it, but we don’t know what we don’t know yet. It’s, again, tempting to—on day one—be like: “Here is our programming!”

But it’s yet to be seen what our value actually is to the community. I don’t have those answers yet.

If there’s a grocer out there who wants to get started improving the sustainability of their business, is there a starting point you’d recommend?

I think that the biggest thing, for me, is just a mindset shift.

The mindset is: this is exciting.

If you look at it as problem-solving and fact-finding and part of your job to solve these things versus an obstacle or some consumer demand you’re trying to meet, if you can change your mindset to: “This is part of my job and my responsibility as a grocery”— that will be the most helpful. When I feel like this is a lot to sort through or research or understand, I just try to shift my mindset back to this idea that I get to be somebody who is helpful or who is pushing the conversation forward in some way.

There’s another mindset shift that I think is really important.

A lot of us, millennials especially, have been told that we are some sort of a leech or a stain on the earth, that we’re ruining it. Which we are. But it’s because we are not fully engaged with it.

We are supposed to be here, in the same way that fruits and vegetables and animals are supposed to be here. We just have to be engaged. If we could shift our mindset to “I’m supposed to be here, I’m supposed to use resources, and it’s okay to have abundance”— but we learn to be thoughtful and engaged versus disconnected, I think that really makes a difference. How can we be generative versus extractive? How can we engage with the resources we do use in a more generative way?

All photos shot by the wonderful Oscar Mendoza.