As United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) strives to continue building sales momentum, the grocery company has launched a partnership with startup GreenChoice to provide independent retailers with technology that provides shoppers with a range of details about foods they carry.
Through the arrangement, announced earlier this month, GreenChoice supplies grocers with a system that lets them print customized shelf labels that feature a score reflecting multiple health- and sustainability-focused factors for each item. Retailers can also use the system to integrate the score and details about goods into their e-commerce platforms.
GreenChoice has compiled details about more than 1 million foods and works directly with grocers to develop customized shelf label designs that include the company’s ratings as well as a QR code that shoppers can scan to call up additional details about products, said Galen Karlan-Mason, founder and CEO of GreenChoice.
The system can also recommend products to shoppers based on their personal preferences and health characteristics. GreenChoice offers a white-label app that grocers can use to allow shoppers to access GreenChoice’s ratings, which it calls GreenScores. The scores fall between 0 and 100 and incorporate factors like nutritional quality, sustainability and ingredient safety.
The rating system is reminiscent of nutrition labeling systems like Guiding Stars and NuVal that retailers have incorporated in the past, but is notable for its focus on independent retailers and for the ways it combines nutrition and sustainability information for shoppers.
UNFI provides GreenChoice’s system to retailers through a unit that offers tools to grocers it serves as a wholesaler. The grocery company began showing off GreenChoice’s technology at its spring and summer selling show for suppliers and retailers in January, and around 12 retailers are currently using the technology, Matt Eckhouse, president of UNFI Digital and Professional Services, said in an emailed statement.
UNFI did not indicate whether it intends to deploy GreenChoice’s technology at its own retail locations, which include grocery stores under the Cub and Shoppers banners.
GreenChoice also works with grocers directly, said Karlan-Mason, who came up with the idea that led to the company’s formation while a graduate business student at Brandeis University. The company is focused on partnering with smaller grocers that might not have the resources to implement technological advances on their own, he said.
The company, which was founded in 2019 and has so far raised about $1 million from investors, currently supplies its system to about 40 retailers, according to Karlan-Mason.
One of the grocers GreenChoice serves is Frazier Farms Market, a three-store natural foods chain with locations in La Mesa, Oceanside and Vista, California. The grocer has been working with GreenChoice for about a year, said owner Matt Frazier.
“It gives people an opportunity to make a choice or to change their mind, or to gain more knowledge or information” on a product’s ingredients, how it was produced or its nutritional qualities, Frazier said.
Frazier Farms sources some products from UNFI, but began its relationship with GreenChoice on its own, Frazier said.
Frazier added that his employees are used to personally helping shoppers decide which products to buy, which helped drive his interest in adding GreenChoice’s technology.
“It’s something that I think you’re going to start seeing other stores move to [so] we thought, ‘Why not get ahead of it?’” Frazier said.
Learner Limbach, chief cooperative officer of Orcas Food Co-op in Eastsound, Washington, which is also using GreenChoice’s technology, said he appreciates the ability to provide shoppers with information he and his small team do not have the time to research themselves. Like Frazier Farms, the co-op is a UNFI customer but began working with GreenChoice outside of its relationship with the wholesaler.
Orcas, which runs two locations and serves the San Juan Islands, currently uses GreenChoice’s system on its two e-commerce sites, which serve individual shoppers and businesses looking to buy goods by the case, Limbach said. The co-op plans to roll out shelf labels that include GreenChoice’s ratings soon and also intends to integrate the scores into digital tags at a later point, he said.
