Healthy food equals healthy communities

"Sustainability.” It’s a big word, and it comes with a lot of responsibility. Sustainability is about:

• reducing food and packaging waste;

• using leftover food to help feed the poor;

• reducing the carbon footprint;

• removing undesirable chemicals and ingredients from food and beverage products to make them healthier;

• ensuring that suppliers and producers practice environmental stewardship and animal husbandry;

• offering products that are inclusive for all people;

• and treating employees fairly and with dignity while compensating them adequately.

Sustainability, simply, is responsibility on myriad levels associated with products and services.

In the next several issues of Store Brands Today, we'll look at what several grocery retailers are doing to be more sustainable. These vignettes may focus on one or only a few things that retailers are doing. In most cases the retailers are doing much more and have made sustainability a significant component of their every-day businesses.

Today, we look at Retail Business Services.

RETAIL BUSINESS SERVICES: HEALTHY FOOD EQUALS HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
Ahold Delhaize USA, the parent company of Salisbury, N.C.-based Retail Business Services, embraces the concept that healthy food makes healthy communities, and reduces the risk of chronic diseases while contributing to a community’s overall resilience and vitality.

Retail Business Services, which develops private brands for Ahold Delhaize USA’s six banners — Food Lion, GIANT Food, Giant/Martin’s, Hannaford, Peapod and Stop & Shop — is putting its parent company’s philosophy to practice.

Late last year, Retail Business Services announced it was making “a landmark commitment” to make the private brand products it provides to all banners free from a list of undesirable ingredients by 2025, including synthetic colors, artificial flavors, artificial preservatives, artificial sweeteners, MSG and high-fructose corn syrup. Retail Business Services’ private brand lines include retailer namesake lines, Nature’s Promise, Taste of Inspirations, CareOne, Smart Living, Always My Baby, Etos, Companion, Limited Time Originals, Guaranteed Value and Cha-Ching.

“At our core, we are about making it easier for everyday shoppers to buy better, and this initiative does just that,” says Juan De Paoli, senior vice president of private brands for Retail Business Services.

Retail Business Services also aims to have 50% of its own brand sales coming from nutritious products by 2020. In 2018, it achieved 47%. It aims to have all own brand products carry Front of Pack labeling by 2020; it achieved 88% in 2018.

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