Caring for Mother Nature + Our Community
Sustainable business practices and food waste reduction are topics we care about deeply and have championed since day one. Our ‘local first’ approach means that we have always sourced produce beginning as close to home as possible, and we’ll take any opportunity we can to connect our customers to the land and the farmers who grow their food. Our waste reduction program means that less than 2% of our produce goes to compost, while our rooftop solar farm significantly reduces our carbon footprint and our beloved bee colonies help to provide pollinators for local farms in the Blenkinsop Valley.
Feeding our community is at the heart of what we do. Alongside countless donations to charitable programs and events, we are proud to work in close partnership with the Rainbow Kitchen, an organization which shares a similar vision to our own: a community without food insecurity, where all have access to good, fresh food.
Journey of our Food
What you see on our shelves is just a tiny part of our food’s life-cycle. In fact, it’s just the beginning!
Our ‘Journey of our Food’ program helps to ensure that as little goes to waste as possible, that it reaches all those who need it through donations to The Rainbow Kitchen and the James Bay After School Program, and that it ultimately goes back to feed Mother Nature herself – after all, a girl’s gotta eat!
Waste Not Want Not
Our waste reduction and recycling program spans every part of our business – from compostable cups and cutlery in The Coffee Project to providing our farmer friends with gently used boxes to help them transport their fruit + veggies from A to B.
In 2024, this program meant that the equivalent of 544 bins of garbage were diverted from landfill! Pretty cool, right?
Oh Hey Honey
Did you know that, on the rooftop of our McKenzie Corner store, we have two bee hives that help to provide pollinators for our farmer friends in the Blenkinsop Valley? Not only that, but our bees provide us with jars of our very own, delicious Root Cellar honey!
In the summer and fall every year, we invite you to come along and learn more about these fascinating creatures and all they contribute to our ecosystem.
Sunny Side Up
Our bees are in good company, because they’re joined by 90 solar panels on the roof of our McKenzie Corner store!
Installed in February 2020, they’re now a core part of our commitment to caring for the world around us and significantly reduce our carbon footprint – we’ve saved 72,981.4kg in CO2 emissions in the years since!