How You Can Use The GoJYBE App To Promote Sustainable Restaurants
Attacking a problem that’s literally been piling up by-the-ton since the 1950s is not easy, but it also never gets any better if we don’t start somewhere. Any way you choose to look at single-use plastic statistics can be paralyzingly scary, (especially when considering the raw size of the restaurant to-go packaging industry, even more so during COVID-19) so JYBE’s approach is to address consumer behavior and restaurant practices – and do our best over time to move the needle on both sides of the kitchen counter.
Progress will not equal perfection in the beginning – nothing new is ever perfect. But it gets better over time with the input of dedicated users – whether it’s a smart phone, a solar panel or an eco-app.
In our case, giving consumers the added ability to screen restaurants for their eco-friendly intentions and actions is vitally important. Restaurants now know they can’t ignore this issue ‒ or their customers who care about the planet.
Leveraging Consumer Power To Build Restaurant Sustainability
Customers now have the leverage to tell a restaurant they like that their JYBE rating is disappointing and lean on them to do better. Or you can just skip over a new restaurant that’s trying to skate by with piles of plastic. And ignorance is no longer an excuse. Owners and chefs can now see in real-time how they compare to their competitors and can ask us for help in raising their game.
On the flip side, with the GoJYBE app, customers can now see how much restaurant plastic and Styrofoam is likely to arrive in their order. They have a powerful tool to wield in their own efforts to curb single-use plastic. We can’t provide an exact estimate of what’s going to arrive in your bag because restaurants change their buying habits over time, and because the product mix in your order will be a little different from the ones that were already rated.
Flexible (For Now)
For that reason, JYBE is a little flexible on how it gathers information and how it reports it out to you. To find out what exactly is in each order would take a survey with 20 questions on it – a fun game with your kids and friends, but not a pleasant experience on your phone. We also don’t expect users to be subject-matter experts. People don’t always know the exact chemistry of the product they’re holding, but over time we’ll get to the answer.
Similarly, we recognize there are limits to what the market offers restaurants to buy, and what food safety laws will allow them to use. We’re interested in moving everyone up the chain so everyone is using the optimal product available at the time.
Examples of some tradeoff sustainability practices for restaurants:
- A molded fiber bowl isn’t perfect, but it’s better than one made of Styrofoam.
- A kraft paper box lined with plastic isn’t ideal, but it’s much better than a solid plastic clamshell.
Always Looking Forward
Let’s step up to the best available products, and then raise the bar for everyone in the next round. If customers start demanding better materials, and restaurants start migrating to the better versions of what they need, then the groundwork will be laid for an industry that’s far better prepared to respond to positive changes in the marketplace. Once there’s a demand for better materials, you can bet that enterprising companies will rush to fill it with the kinds of materials that really solve the problem.
We are hyper-focused on what the best alternatives are and test a lot of the newest offerings to validate their claims and help restaurants source what they need. We are in touch with many of the leading-edge manufacturers and plan to begin reporting more often on new products so the ‘legwork’ of finding alternatives isn’t so time-consumer for busy restaurant owners and managers.
If you’re aware of products making their way to the market and want to tip us off, we’d really appreciate the help.
And as always, I’d love to hear why you JYBE!