If you’ve been a part of the Coolfood community for a while, you know our mission: to transform the food sector by making sustainable dining the easy, delicious, and healthy choice for everyone. We believe that by changing what’s on the menu, we can unlock one of the most powerful levers for reducing food-related greenhouse gas emissions.
But with climate targets looming, the status quo isn’t enough. We recognize that the food industry needs to move further and faster. That’s why over the past year we’ve been asking ourselves a bolder question: Our answer is the Coolfood Accelerator. Following a year-long pilot, this new membership feature is specifically designed to help members identify and rapidly scale the most effective approaches to food emissions reduction.
A New Opportunity to Drive Down Emissions
Since 2019, Coolfood has helped organizations set science-based targets and measure their food-related emissions. But measurement alone doesn’t change behavior. Real impact happens when we shift the food environment and make plant-rich meals the easy, appealing choice.
The Coolfood offers practical strategies backed by behavior science, from menu design tweaks to naming best practices, that help nudge diners towards more plant-rich meals. Members have been using it to inform their operations, and it’s working. Many in our Coolfood cohort continue to make impressive progress, cutting emissions while maintaining customer satisfaction and business growth.
Still, we found ourselves wondering which specific techniques are driving those results? Are some interventions more effective than others?
We needed a collection of tools to help organizations identify, implement, and scale the most effective approaches. So, after spending the past year designing, piloting, and refining, we’re excited to introduce the Coolfood Accelerator.
What is the Coolfood Accelerator?
The Coolfood Accelerator’s main components include an annual survey, sector-specific resources, and tailored workshops. Together, they’re designed to help members move from insight to implementation, and to strengthen the learning network that makes Coolfood so effective.
The survey helps organizations take stock of the behavior change strategies they use and uncover where there’s room to go further. Paired with our member-specific Climate Impact of Food reports, it reveals the relationship between changes to the dining environment and emissions reductions.
Analysis of the survey responses is then used to yield sector insights that are then developed into member resources. Peer learning is one of Coolfood’s greatest strengths, and the Accelerator program creates opportunities for members to learn from one another through shared insights and sector-specific summaries.
The workshops, available to top-tier members, build on the survey results and sector insights. They are tailored sessions designed to create space for teams to explore what’s working, set priorities, and detail next steps to operationalize strategies from the Coolfood Playbook.
How the Accelerator Program Came to Life
Like much of what we do, the Coolfood Accelerator was a collaborative effort with industry from the start. The centerpiece of the program is the newly designed Accelerator Survey, which was developed in partnership with our behavioral scientists Once we had a draft, we tested it with some of our Coolfood members who shared feedback on the language, length, and format.
When seeking a partner to test the Coolfood Accelerator, we chose Tetra Pak (member since 2022) for their critical and unique operational profile. They were able to deliver procurement data spanning multiple global sites, a factor essential for robust validation. This partnership was key, and it allowed us to successfully iterate and fine-tune the survey design.
With the initial concept successfully validated by Tetra Pak, we were ready to scale the experiment. We then invited all Coolfood members to complete the survey, allowing us to gather feedback and refine the user experience further. The positive results and the clear appetite for a structured, data-driven approach confirmed the Accelerator’s value. This success solidified our decision to roll out the Coolfood Accelerator as a permanent feature of the Coolfood membership.
What’s Next?
We collected our first round of survey responses in June 2025 and sector summaries will be shared later this year with members.
The Accelerator Survey will become a formal part of our membership package in 2026, alongside our annual procurement data requests. We encourage every Coolfood member to take part and complete the survey. The insights from your responses can help your organization understand where opportunities exist, and optimize your efforts to drive down emissions. Each response also adds to a growing body of shared insights that strengthen the entire Coolfood community.
Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen when we act together. When we share data and solutions, individual action becomes collective momentum, and that’s how real transformation begins.