Christy Cook - Inside the Largest Food Waste Prevention Plan

[00:00:10] Adam: Hello and welcome to Green Champions. 

[00:00:12] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories. 

[00:00:17] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Adam. 

[00:00:25] Dominique: I'm Dominique. 

[00:00:25] Adam: Today we are joined by Christy Cook, a sustainability consultant and entrepreneur with over 20 years experience in corporate sustainability, ESG, and customer success for both large corporations and startups. 

In case you missed it, last time we chatted with Christy about how she transitioned from operations into a large scale sustainability project. A favorite quote was when she shared, "people need to be in business to do good." 

So today we're gonna unpack Christy's champion story as a sustainability consultant helping some of the world's largest players take action from the United Nations Environmental Program to Sodexo and Walmart. 

So Christy, welcome back. 

[00:00:59] Christy: Thanks y'all. So much fun. Let's do it again. 

[00:01:01] Dominique: Yeah. Thank you, Christy. I'm so excited. Can you remind listeners how you view your role in sustainability and the impact ecosystem at large? 

[00:01:11] Christy: I believe that what I do is assess situations, understand where we need to go, and I build programs that scale because that is what we need. Again, impact being important to me, working in the corporate world, often you've gotta go beyond one or two sites. You've gotta go beyond that. And so I believe what I do well is creating programs and processes that can be replicated over time, that can be implemented in various situations through minor customizations that can work for many. 

And I believe that is part of what is needed in sustainability programs is something that can be a little nimble, but has enough structure around it that makes that impact, that drives to the end result we're trying to get to. So I think that's what I've done well, and that seems to be the work that I continue to do with various clients. 

[00:02:04] Adam: Got it. Now, can you paint a picture of what that work looks like day to day? 

[00:02:07] Christy: It does vary because I've got multiple projects going on at different times and I think that, if I had to give a tip for folks out there, when you're working on so many projects at different times, different types of calls every day, and you might jump from one to another or you're at a site and you're trying to make sure that you remember really what you're trying to accomplish, it's important to be organized. 

And I have a crazy organizational process.I have a fantastic binder that has a list of my main projects. So there's about five of those. 

I do literally recall when this happened. I was working for Aramark at the University of Alabama, and at that time I was just in operations. And I needed a better to-do list and I opened up Microsoft Word and over a course of time, I figured out my own organization process and I would use that. 

I remember going to the copier and making copies, and I had this little binder and I would go through it each week. It has evolved since then. People are making millions of dollars right now trying to help people be organized. And I am one of those person people that had found one I really like. 

[00:03:13] Dominique: Whenever you wanna drop Christy's planner, I'll buy it. 

[00:03:15] Christy: I have two. It goes between, but right now I am really on this one. This is year two of me using this one. That's how I keep things organized. Good tip because when you're working across different projects, it's hard to remember exactly what's most important and most important for each project. And when you're working on work that matters, you don't ever wanna lose sight of that. So that is just a tidbit that I dropped in here. 

[00:03:38] Adam: That really resonates with what you said in this first episode about, hey, you show up with your passion to something, but you have to be able to put this in business context and then build processes that scale. And you can't build those processes that scale without having that organization and that understanding of here's what my priority is. 

[00:03:52] Christy: Exactly. Yeah. Thank you for that little validation. I appreciate that. I thought it was just OCD, but now. 

[00:03:58] Dominique: No, and you're walking the walk. You're like, Hey, if we're going to do more as an organization and has to have a strong foundation, and you're doing that, when you walk in the room, you're like, "I am someone who manages a lot of projects. And so here's my management structure. " 

[00:04:12] Christy: Yeah. Very true. 

[00:04:14] Adam: Let's dive into two of these stories specifically. First let's talk about Walmart. I'd love to hear just how you got connected with them. 

[00:04:21] Christy: Yeah. It's an interesting story and here is a tip. You have to have conversations with people. You need to make relationships. And here's why. I had a friend that I respect greatly. And she said, "Hey, I have been asked to do this job and I can't do it." so she recommended me. This is why you have conversations. This is why you build relationships. she couldn't do it. She had a big workload, but also it wasn't very much money. 

So tip two is sometimes we do work, you select work and projects that matter because that things might happen in the future for you. So this project was working with The Consumer Goods Forum, who is an international nonprofit that's made up of mostly retailers.So you've got these international grocers as well that we don't interact with as much here in the US and they said, "Hey, we have some grant funding for about a two year project from the United Nations Environmental Program with Walmart, and we want to focus on several things. One, we wanna focus on consumer messaging in store that will help guests waste less food." A sort of myth out there that some folks don't know is that the majority of food waste actually happens in homes. It's not necessarily businesses. 

And so Walmart is an organization in the world that wants to help their customers reduce food waste, expand their knowledge into their customer's homes. And they also had a couple of issues that they were trying to address. 

One is, there are foods that are still good, even if they're close to not being perfect condition, and I don't like to talk about Best Buy dates. You'll get me off on a whole nother podcast. Most people call them expiration dates. They are not. But as we get close to food that might be ending its best life, it is really great to have a program in place where you can reduce the price of that so that it can go to someone who wants it, who needs it, who has the culinary skills to also transform it into something else who can put it in their freezer and enjoy it later. 

So Walmart had a passion, again, for helping their customers understand how to reduce food waste, but also how to make sure that this food gets to people and it's good quality. 

[00:06:28] Dominique: So Walmart, the problem they were facing was seeing a lot of food waste happening in the homes of their customers? 

[00:06:35] Christy: That is a universal issue in the US and they did understand that. they also understood that as a corporate citizen in this world, they wanted to share their knowledge and help their customers reduce waste. 

[00:06:45] Dominique: So what was the support they were seeking in this role you took on? 

[00:06:49] Christy: They were supporting the best consumer messaging to help customers understand and be motivated. This is a great question, and be motivated to purchase this food at a discounted rate. 

[00:06:59] Dominique: So they knew their solution was related to cutting prices at certain points to promote purchasing? 

[00:07:07] Christy: That is one theory that is in place at Walmart and many grocers. A common thing that grocers are working on not just Walmart, but globally, grocers are trying to identify the best markdown strategy of how much to markdown, when in order that customers will purchase it. Walmart knew that they had food that was being left over past its prime opportunity to sell at full price, and they wanted to ensure it was getting in the hands of people. And to address that problem, they created a messaging campaign for consumers and they changed the location of how they did this. 

We did this project with bread. So what we did was the bread was across all the store in the bread section. Let's just say you walk in the door. Typically you walk in the door of a Walmart, you walk into produce section and there's research that says 95% of consumers go to the grocery store because of what in your vegetable section when you walk in. So that's how most customers choose their grocery store, which is also not related to this, but why there can be waste in fruits and vegetables in a grocery store because you want it to look beautiful and plentiful. 

For this particular project though, you walk in and you will see that if you look across, generally your produce section, you look over there, you'll see a bakery section So what we did is we combined it in one area and we had a campaign around the language and we created this program called Save Some Dough. And it is Save Some Dough, get overstocked baked goods for less and help reduce food waste. 

So those were some messaging right there that we had for customers to see. Maybe that doesn't sound super exciting. Maybe it doesn't sound life changing, but it has impact. And here's the impact, couple of things that happened as a result of this. One, we tested this in 40 stores. We did two different kind of layouts of how it worked. Both had pros and cons, but ultimately, what happened was because it was all consolidated, customers bought more bread. That's one thing. They didn't always buy the discounted bread. Those sales actually decreased, but they bought more bread overall. 

Now what happened to that decreased priced bread then? It actually, Walmart has a great system in that they have donation partners and they also have a company called Denali that is a depackaging company and they're any food products can go into this container, this dumpster, and it's composted. Okay? So they have very little landfill in these food areas here. 

[00:09:33] Dominique: So because it was consolidated, the employees picking up this bread that was getting near the date was able to make sure it got to the food banks and it was able to be used and eaten. So overall, what we were able to achieve by using this messaging, by consolidating the bread was we had some increased sales in the bakery department. We had increased donation rates as a result of this. And was a popular program and I hope that it will continue. I really enjoyed the time working with Walmart. They do look at things, very data-driven. So before you did that work with Walmart, you were also part of the largest food waste prevention plan that has ever been done. Which, let's just hang on that for a second. That's some crazy stuff. Can you set the stage for what that is? 

[00:10:23] Christy: that sounds pretty glamorous. And who knows? It might not be real anymore because there, there's some great work that's being done out there by a lot of people. 

I was introduced to a company called Leanpath, which is a waste measurement technology. And I was pretty skeptical at first, and I had the support of Sodexo, my organization and the support of Andrew Shakman at Leanpath. And what we decided to do together was run a pilot program. So 2008, 2009, we ran a pilot program where we added Leanpath in at eight university sites across the US. And with great success reducing waste going to landfill and also saving dollars spent on food. So typically, Leanpath results will advertise on the website that it'll save you 2-6% in food costs. I can tell you that we experienced something in that range as well. So that's a very positive thing when you're spending millions of dollars in food. And you also absolutely reduce waste. 

The thing that I love the most is the dishwasher becomes the king in the kitchen or the queen in the kitchen, depending. No one that knows more about waste in most cases than the person at the dish pit. 

We ran that pilot, I wanna say for about six months. And then after that, over the next year we launch Leanpath at 160 universities the following year, which is a huge scale at a corporate level to launch that many sites after a smaller pilot. 

[00:11:45] Dominique: What does it mean to deploy that technology? Are you putting in scales behind a kitchen or is it a POS system? 

[00:11:52] Christy: Yeah. Great questions. So what it was is, yes, it was a scale. It's in the back of the house, it's in the kitchen area. And if you imagine, maybe let's just call it a square tabletop, but what you might the, at this point, old school scales at the grocery store. But it had an arm that had a camera on it. So every time you placed a piece, a container of food on the scale, it weighed it, it took a picture of it. The employee would add just a little bit of information, at the time. The technology has since changed, but it would say, "Hey, this is a full pan of beef brisket from the hotline." And so you had data, you had images, and you had information about why it was wasted. 

[00:12:30] Dominique: Yeah. That context is, it's so special. 

[00:12:32] Christy: Exactly. So now you are able to make some data-driven decisions about what food is being wasted, where is it coming from, why is it being wasted, and that gives you information about what you can do with it. And that's part just by measuring, that interventional loan, just through the measurement, you reduce your waste because there's an awareness, there's a conscientious thing that has evolved in the kitchen, which is great, and then that's when the data really comes in. 

[00:12:57] Dominique: That brings us back to like episode three, we talked about you can't improve what you don't measure. 

[00:13:02] Adam: Yeah. And just critical piece of bringing in that awareness to exactly what's happening, right? Because without that insight you can't do that. And it wasn't a simple okay, we're gonna go out of our way to write this down. You built something very specific to do this, right? You had cameras, you had scales, you had a system for capturing that data. 

[00:13:19] Christy: Absolutely right. It was different. I was asking employees to do different processes. And anytime you have a process change, let's remember back to that episode you did before with me and I was talking about a woman who'd worked somewhere for 50 years. That's hard to change process with someone who's been doing it for so long and is clearly good at what they do. 

So yeah, that behavior change was big, that culture change is big. To get to what happens over time, we ran more pilots. We ran pilots in Italy and Canada and Australia and other locations. I was telling the story throughout Sodexo and other countries were picking it up and testing it as well. 

It took 10 years for that program to truly go global officially. People were picking it up here and there, but in 2018, Sodexo picked up the global program to implement this in tens of thousands of sites. 

[00:14:12] Dominique: Can you repeat what you told us in the first episode about the actual size of Sodexo for somebody who's listening who doesn't know? 

[00:14:17] Christy: Yeah, really great context. So at the time when I was there, Sodexo was the 20th largest employer in the world, and they were operated across 80 countries. So the scale was huge. The scale is huge, and they work across seven business segments, including healthcare, K-12, senior living, corporate dining facilities, universities, a lot of different services. So the breadth is huge and hugely impactful and I learned so much. 

It's safe to say that any organization that procures food probably has some connection or proximity to Sodexo, which is interesting. Like we've all gone through our school systems or might have a corporate office that has a kitchen, we go to restaurants. So it's really pervasive and for that organization to be implementing photos and measurements and context gathering for that food waste. It doesn't really get bigger than that. 

It's an important topic. For folks that don't know, food waste is an opportunity, a business opportunity, social opportunity, environmental opportunity, especially if you're doing anything in food, you have an opportunity to use it better, use more of it. Buy what you need, don't waste it and it's dollars. And so if you manage that well, that is a positive thing. And I believe that every organization that is working in some form of food, restaurant, food service, if you're not, you need to be looking at food waste. Everyone has wasted food, everyone has it. If you're not working on it intentionally, you have a problem. You have food waste. 

I appreciate and recognize that there are a lot of people doing a lot of things, but if you're not measuring it, you don't know. I would encourage people that think they don't have it to measure it and discover where that is so they can make some positive changes. 

[00:16:02] Dominique: I wanna make sure I understood you correctly. I think it's really important how much you've brought up the data as a value point and searching for opportunity to get to this business case. Is it safe to say that when you're looking through this data, whether it's at employee retention, pounds wasted, sources of waste. What you're eventually coming down to is a dollar value. Is that a good way to summarize where you hunt for opportunity? 

[00:16:26] Christy: Yes is a short answer. If you can generate the information that shows that there's an opportunity to make strong savings, that's a fantastic place to start. And you know that means that you could have some funding for that program, that it makes a difference and it could be sustainable. I would say that it's a good quality to look for. 

It's also really nice to choose the projects that you're working on. And I'm saying this from the point of view of an organization, being told to do something is not fun. So if you're regulated to do something, you tend to not really commit, you tend to do it to meet the minimum requirements. 

However, if you select something, you tend to have a greater passion for it or a deeper desire to do something. And food waste is just a fantastic opportunity for anyone to address because I think it's almost a limitless space to find new opportunities to work on. 

[00:17:18] Dominique: Yeah. And I also love that perspective on sustainability and the business case and just this grounded in facts and numbers because especially at right now in, in our political climate and thinking about how motivators are shifting, that is just going to ring true across the board. And so if you're someone listening, trying to create space in an organization to prioritize these activities, there are so many arrows pointing towards it being just good practice and you might have to just dig a little bit and get the answers so that you can have founded facts to point to in terms of why this is going to benefit the broader organization. 

[00:17:54] Christy: Absolutely. I think it would be an interesting exercise for any business listening to think about what are their top three or four business problems? Is it labor and turnover? Is it the cost of food if you're in the food business? Again, even overall besides turnover and labor, but the costs of that, whether it's just the hourly rates, the salaries, or if it's the cost of turnover and retraining, there are huge costs there. 

 If you look at those top business problems, I like to look at the solutions that I know sustainability will address for those top business problems and issues and that's where I like to focus. Because if those are the business issues, I'm solving those business issues, I'm also incorporating the culture of looking at sustainability as a business solution. And that's important. And I do believe that it is a business solution. 

[00:18:40] Dominique: What are you most proud of when you think about your career so far? 

We talked about two really specific highlighting stories, but I'm just curious, when you sit back on a good day, what are you most proud of? 

[00:18:52] Adam: So for listeners out there, I think you can Google this SEA Change, but it's SEA Change. Sea Change is an accelerator program that is, one of them is based here in Columbus, Ohio, which is where I met Adam and Dominique. And just this Saturday, a couple of days ago for listeners anyway, we had the sort of end of year gala for this cohort for 10 years of SEA Change. And what I was proud of is that two years ago, three years ago, I mentored Ella who won the Crowd Favorite Award. And on Saturday night, Sean, my mentee for this year won the Crowd Favorite Award. And Ella gave Sean the check. And it was cool to see both of my mentees up on the stage yet together. And I think that is what it's about. It's about people, and it is about sharing what you know and helping others. And so I think that was just a really great, that was a great moment. So what have you not done that you hope to work on? 

[00:19:51] Christy: I think it's always important to challenge yourself to do things even if you're not comfortable. In my investor strategies role, which is my company where I do my consulting, and also in 4XI, where I'm the chief sustainability officer in residence, sometimes I do work that I have never done before. And we had a client with 4XI that needed some work on a environmental impact calculator. And they're a single use disposable company and in food service, we do need that sometimes, especially in hospitals, or in other cases where you have no choice but to use disposables and they're doing some ground-breaking work on using the right materials, the best materials producing these products here in the US. And it was fun to do an environmental calculator. I had never done one. My answer is sometimes you might not be excited and you might do something that you've never done before and you need to do it anyway. 

I wanted to share that as an empowering tip for folks, especially if you're a solo entrepreneur or you're not sure you're not brave, you don't have that confidence of, "Can I do this?" You can give it a shot. You can do it. You can absolutely do it if you not, if there's ways to do it, right? I had never done it, but I knew I could, and so I did, and I'm very proud of that. I am challenging myself in the future to find something else that scares me. There's a chef in Charlotte. He's the head chef for this restaurant called Counter. And he was really so underrepresented. 

 And one of the things that he said was, a mentor chef of his said, "What do you want to cook for me?" And he said I'd like to cook this for you." And he was like, "Okay. What would scare you the most to cook for me?" And he was like, I really don't want to cook 

 a cassoulet." And a cassoulet essentially it's a dish with beans and various meats in it. And you can cook it over a long period of time, but it can be very dry or it can get. It can be bad. There could be some bad cassoulet. And what he said is, "I wanna cook that until it no longer scares me." And I thought, what a kind of profound statement. So, Adam, I don't know quite what I wanna do yet, but I want to do the things that scare me so I learn more, so I can gain more confidence in myself and make a bigger impact in the world. So I'm doing some soul searching towards the end of this year about where I want my business to be in 2026 and beyond. And so hopefully I'll have a better answer to that in, in a little while. 

[00:22:19] Adam: Awesome. Thanks, and thanks for joining us today. I really love this thread that woven of, one, yes, you've done these big projects in the world, right, for Walmart, Sodexo and things that really move forward, tackling food waste in new and innovative ways. But underneath it, there's almost this superpower of building relationships with people and bringing that curiosity passion to what you're doing to find out a better way. 

Like I just see so much of this listening to people, building those relationships, understanding what their needs are at different levels so that you can design solutions that work for everybody. It's just really interesting how that kind of unfolded through this. But if you're listening to this, I think, hey, take that as a takeaway. That one, yes, dive in with your passion to make that impact, but also listen to the people of at all levels to understand how to do that in a way that is driving value for everybody. How can people connect with you and be an advocate for the work that you're doing? 

[00:23:12] Christy: Oh man. I would love for folks to find me on LinkedIn. It's about the, really the only social media that I really do. But try to really share what work I'm working on, the impacts of that and engage with fellow professionals. I'd love to chat with people there. 

[00:23:26] Dominique: Thanks for joining us, Christy. This has been really great and I am excited to see what you do next. I can't imagine how somebody so passionate in food waste reduction and innovation can get bigger than working at grocery stores and at one of the largest suppliers of food around the entire globe. So I'm excited to see all the things that you do next, and I appreciate you sharing with us what it's looked like to create impact in those spaces. And I will now think differently when I see discounted bread at most grocery stores. 

[00:23:58] Christy: Yeah. Good. Thanks y'all. 

[00:23:59] Dominique: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories like Christy's, behind the idea that no matter your background, career, or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change. 

[00:24:11] Adam: You can find our episodes or reach us at thegreenchampions.com. If you want to stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. 

If you wanna support the podcast, you can donate on our website as well. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions, and we'll dig into another awesome sustainability success story in our next episode.