Coolfood Membership
Join a diverse network of organizations driving down food emissions and achieving their business goals.
A Roadmap to More Sustainable Dining
A Coolfood membership is your roadmap for reducing food-related emissions. It’s designed for organizations looking to enhance their efforts and get dedicated support in achieving their business and sustainability goals.
By becoming a member, you get a proven, science-based framework, the Coolfood Pledge, to move from ambition to action. We provide the research, tools, and a community to confidently navigate your sustainability journey and become a vital part of a collective effort toward a more sustainable food future. Coolfood helps major food providers reduce the climate impact of the food they serve without compromising on taste, customer experience, or business competitiveness.
Your Membership Delivers:
- A Proven Strategic Framework (The Coolfood Pledge): Get access to a clear, science-aligned framework for setting and achieving your food-related emissions targets. Members commit to reducing food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030.
- Annual climate impact report: Your data fuels progress. We provide a personalized climate impact report with year-over-year progress and benchmarks, validating your data so you can confidently report your success. Best of all, your contributions help advance the entire food industry through our collective data.
- Practical, Science-based Guidance: Apply strategies grounded in behavioral science to hit business objectives and drive meaningful results.
- Cross-Industry Collaboration & Learning: Join a dynamic community where industry operations shape new WRI research and identify opportunities to advance the food industry.
- Exclusive Events & Networking: Access quarterly webinars on emerging issues, exclusive networking events and summits, and other opportunities for cross-sector learning and peer-to-peer insights.
- Continuous Improvement & Support: We provide an annual review of your progress and actions. This expert feedback helps you continually refine your strategy, optimize your efforts, and discover new ways to drive down food-related emissions. You’ll also stay connected to the latest research, ensuring your plan is always at the cutting edge.
Ikea's journey to a more plant-rich menu
Did you know that Ikea is the world’s 6th largest food chain? Learn from Ikea’s Strategic Topic Lead for Healthy and Sustainable Living how Ikea has prioritized enhancing communication skills to reshape consumers’ attitudes and perceptions towards plant-based foods.
It’s All in a Name: How to Boost the Sales of Plant-Based Menu ItemsFrequently Asked Questions
We offer a range of membership packages designed to fit organizations of different sizes and needs. Please contact us for pricing information tailored to your specific organization.
As part of our mission as a non-profit we also offer free and discounted plans for some members in the public sector.
Yes. Coolfood members who take the Coolfood Pledge are making a science-based target, which is a recognized standard for sustainability reporting and compliance. Coolfood’s annual data reports can be used as a resource for your public reporting. For specific questions, we recommend contacting the Coolfood team directly.
You will need to provide your annual food purchase data in weight which we use to estimate your total food-related greenhouse gas emissions and land use.
Our methodology, developed by our environmental scientists, helps you measure food-related greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Science Based Targets initiative and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. It is unique because it accounts for the opportunity cost of using land that could otherwise be sequestering carbon via reforestation or native vegetation in addition to emissions from agricultural production, processing, packaging, transport, and losses.
We use agricultural supply chain emission factors from a global life cycle meta-analysis by Poore and Nemecek (2018). Our methodology also incorporates carbon opportunity cost emission factors from Searchinger et al. (2018). You can find more details on our data sets and methodology in our Coolfood Pledge Technical Note.
We use a metric called “carbon opportunity cost.” This estimates the amount of carbon that could be stored if production of any given food declined and the land used to produce that food instead returned to its native vegetation
It is a longer term look at the climate impact of agricultural land use and is more comprehensive in terms of impact than other metrics that are typically used in life cycle assessments.
This approach is crucial for two main reasons:
It provides a more complete picture of a food’s true carbon footprint.
It highlights how shifting to foods with lower land requirements can help prevent future deforestation.
More details on this methodology can be found in Coolfood Pledge Technical Note.
Our primary goal is to help you reduce food-related emissions. While some members may experience cost savings from menu optimization and reduced meat purchases, we have not conducted specific research to verify a causal relationship.
Ready to champion healthier, more sustainable dining?
Connect with us to explore opportunities to reduce your organization’s food related GHG emissions.