We’ve been following Untold for a while now after quickly picking up on their forward thinking and great intentions for the coffee industry. It’s fairly difficult to tell with many companies whether they truly intend on making better choices or just see it as a marketing opportunity. However, it was clear to see transparency and good practice from the folks at UNTOLD in abundance.
I was super into how open they were about the difficulties of making certain changes as a small business, so I decided to reach out and had an amazing chat with James. I was even more impressed by the extent of thought and knowledge they had regarding a corporate approach to sustainability and views on the circular economy. We’re excited to share some of the questions and answers from that conversation where we delve into the details of a more sustainable coffee industry as well as the potential for reverse logistics and a sharing economy.
If any of you have any further questions or feedback about the conversation below, please feel free to email or message us on social media and let's have a chat!
1.) What elements have you introduced to your business that you believe improves your environmental and social impact?
- Our recent change in packaging from plastic bags to aluminium tins has definitely been a step in the right direction.
- We give our customers the option to offset the Co2 produced from shipping their order for a small fee (usually around 26p).
- We're in the process of launching our 'Celebrate Direct Trade' mark, which we hope to become a universal symbol for coffee that is traded directly. Whilst the environmental impact is often slightly worse than purchasing through a third party, the social impact is really powerful and well worth it in our opinion.
2.) What were the main reasons behind those changes?
We made all of these changes based on one core principle, which is, it feels like the right thing to do. Once you reach a certain level of understanding on how what you're doing is affecting the environment or those around you, it's extremely uncomfortable to continue doing it. As an example, although our retail packaging is now in tins, for the most part, our wholesale coffee is still packaged in plastic bags, this makes us really uncomfortable and so we are working hard to come up with an alternative solution.
3.) Were profit margins a considerable obstacle in implementing those changes?
In terms of packaging, not at all. It was a concern at first, but the cost of our packaging by swapping from plastic bags to tins stayed practically the same. However, as with any significant changes, there's always a pretty heavy price to pay for implementing them. Though it wasn't really a cause for concern, more a matter of can we afford to do this at the moment (as a small/growing business).
4.) Did you experience pressure from customers prior to making those changes and have you noticed a different reaction from customers since?
If I'm honest, not really. At least, not verbally. We felt pressure to be doing the right thing, for our customers and our planet. Of course, both of these are a work in progress, but it's what we're constantly working towards.
5.) What do you believe are the shortfalls of the coffee industry with regards to waste generation and have you identified any areas you'd like to improve in the future within your own business?
If we're talking about the coffee industry as a whole, then the biggest waste issue is all the food that is being thrown out at the end of the day by coffee shops. It's seriously shocking and ultimately comes down to bad stock management. From what I've seen personally, chains are the biggest culprits, but they do tend to have a lot more food on offer than the smaller independent coffee shops. There's massive room for both parties to improve.
As for areas that are a little closer to home for us at the moment, packaging still has to be pretty high on the agenda. We've got lots that we want to achieve in terms of making our packaging better for the environment. Not just the packaging of the product, but the packaging of shipments too.
6.) What are the benefits/barriers to implementing those changes?
As mentioned above, implementing big changes come with a big price tag. As a small business, we have to do a bit of juggling when it comes to deciding what changes to implement first. It's also important for us to get the balance right with packaging. If we really wanted to, we could package our products in a single cardboard box and that's it, but if we were to do this, it'd be incredibly difficult to stand out in the market and ultimately sales would fall. Whilst sales aren't the most important thing in the world, we do need them in order to maintain and run our business. So finding that balance between environmentally friendly and providing a creative and exciting customer experience, that's definitely a big challenge.
7.) Do you have a limited or extensive local customer base both retail and wholesale and do you deliver coffee to them by car?
The majority of our customers are online retail orders, which is where we're putting our attention at the moment, but we do have a few wholesale customers and their orders are delivered by one of our shipping partners.
8.) Would you be open to collaborating with a local independent courier which is based around zero-waste service? This would include using returnable and reusable packaging to be delivered and picked up from customers (Reverse Logistics).
Absolutely! There's a company doing this quite successfully already (their name escapes me), but there's quite a lot of friction for the customer as they have to take it back to the post office. It also ends up almost doubling the emissions for each delivery, as returns are made separate from deliveries. If a company was able to provide this sort of service with 0 friction to customers, low Co2 emissions and for a realistic price, we'd definitely jump on board the ship
9.) How willing would you be to share resources with other companies and competitors such as transport and packaging in order to reduce waste and carbon footprint?
Very willing! I'd be very interested to see someone explore this idea more. We'd love to take on the task, but we've already got a lot of important projects on our plate at the moment and we simply wouldn't be able to give it the attention it needs.
