Helping food retailers succeed, with strategic sustainability.
The Sustainable Food Retail Certification program helps food retailers achieve operational excellence and meet sustainability goals by benchmarking performance, reducing costs, and increasing margins.
See how Certification can strengthen your business.
Take the First StepWhy Certify?
Certification offers benefits from the boardroom to the grocery store floor.
Earn Recognition
Demonstrate sustainability leadership and earn differentiation in the market
Reduce Costs
Gain visibility at each store and address opportunities to reduce cost and increase margins
Mitigate Risk
Consistent performance tracking across stores, allowing transparency and risk mitigation
Streamline Sustainability
Systematize sustainability management across your portfolio
Validate Performance
Benchmark ESG performance along a clear path for improvement
How It Works
From enrollment to final Certification, the certification process is convenient, accessible, and practical.
Contact us for a price estimate.
01
Complete Program Enrollement
- Kick off meeting
02
Performance Assessment
- Self-Assessment of Facilitated Educational Audit
03
Review Results
- Data is quantified by Ratio Institute
- Recommendations Report is delivered
04
Complete Certification
- Communicate Leadership & Gain recognition
05
Ongoing Implementation
- Set advanced benchmarks
- Annual renewal
- Leverage exclusive resources to accelerate your sustainability journey
Charting Your Sustainability Journey
The Certification’s tiered approach allows retailers to start where they are in their sustainability journey and see a clear path toward improved performance.
Advocate
Complies with requirements to prevent pollution, provides a safe working environment, ensures safe food products, and invests in basic efficiency measures.
Steward
Has a public sustainability commitment, prioritizes community engagement and employee satisfaction, and makes bigger investments in efficiency improvement and impact reduction measures.
Leader
Has clear sustainability goals and has public commitments to drastically reducing or eliminating the biggest environmental and social impacts of its operations.
Luminary
Has integrated sustainability as an operational principle, and has invested in promoting the circular economy, net zero carbon, diversity, equity & inclusion, and sustainable and ethical supply chains in its operations.
What Does Certification Cover?
The Sustainable Food Retail Certification Program offers a comprehensive vision of food retail sustainability covering 17 core practice areas.
Learn more about program requirements in the Sustainable Food Retail Standard and Certification Guide.
Geissler’s Supermarket is excited to be participating in a program that allows us to communicate to our customers and employees how we are moving towards being more sustainable. We have a lot of initiatives in place to reduce our impact, and being systematic about how we manage for sustainability benefits our communities both locally and globally.
Geissler’s Supermarket
Since 2008, we’ve steadily expanded and refined our sustainability program, particularly with reducing refrigerant usage and food waste, along with conserving energy. This [Certification program] has helped make us a more efficient company and allowed us to reduce our impact on the communities we serve.
Weis Markets
As we continue to grow and serve Portland communities, the Sustainable Food Retail Certification has allowed us to track and measure the social, environmental and financial impact of our sustainability initiatives in our store operations. From waste and energy reduction to operational efficiencies, this information will allow us to be more strategic in how we create a positive impact for the communities we serve and our bottom line.
Rosemont Market & Bakery