Whole Foods Market

Sustainability Guidelines for Private Label Brands

Whole Foods approached Guacamole Airplane to help lay the groundwork for more sustainable packaging for their two private label brands, 365 and Whole Foods Market. We spent five months researching and composing a set of actionable packaging design strategies, almost like a brand guide but for sustainability, for their design and sourcing teams to use as a tool when developing new packaging.  

The Challenge:

• Create a set of packaging guidelines for a wide variety of SKUs across beverages, soups & simmer sauces, pre-packaged meats, and dry goods.

• Distill complex information into something palatable for the busy Whole Foods Brand & Sourcing teams. Our audience here didn’t want or need white papers about every nuanced issue.

• Ensure solutions are actionable rather than purely academic given supply chain constraints of co-packers, cost considerations, and appropriate performance and shelf-life needs. 

The Results:

• Set of guidelines following an “Avoid/Acceptable/Preferred” framework to easily reference. 

• That’s about all we can share about this one, and we’re grateful to the Whole Foods lawyers for letting us share even this much (thanks for reading chaps!) But 4-6 month deep dives resulting in detailed actionable sustainability guidelines, new packaging pilots and partnerships, and roadmaps towards 2025 and 2030 sustainable packaging programs are indicative of much of the work we do that we’re not able to share full case studies of publicly. Please contact our team to learn more if this type of R&D seems like the right fit. info@guacamoleairplane.com

Guacamole Airplane Project Team:

Ian Montgomery

Marisa Sanchez-Dunning

Nick Tonn

Claire Weigand