We’re very excited to announce that our whole bean coffee is now available to buy via Good Club, an online store that specialises in low impact groceries to reduce your environmental footprint. As part of our CRU in conversation series, we’ve chatted to Lex Panayi, Good Club’s buying director, to find out a bit more about their platform, and how Good Club is hoping to change the way we think about shopping online by pioneering the use of returnable, refillable pots and free monthly carbon neutral deliveries.
So, what exactly is Good Club?
“We’re an online sustainable grocery shop that helps people, mostly families, swap from mainstream food, drink and household items into more environmentally friendly options.
Good Clubbers stock up on their monthly store cupboard food, drink, household and personal shopping and we deliver it in returnable, reusable boxes which we collect the next working day, for free. We’ve just launched our new zero waste range where we deliver things, like coffee beans, in returnable, refillable pots.
We only stock sustainable groceries, and along with our returnable, reusable packaging, people can truly reduce their environmental impact through their monthly food shop. We’re also here to help people see through what is a very foggy industry and clearly show what sustainability means for everyday essentials. .”
“We hate waste and we’re on a mission to remove it from the food chain.”
When did Good Club launch, and why?
“We launched in 2019 in answer to the global problem of plastic waste. We were shocked at the amount of packaging used in supermarkets at the end of the night, and we felt that there had to be a better way.
The issue we faced was one of accessibility. We know from research that over 8 out of 10 of people would prefer to shop sustainably, but less than 10% of shopping the UK currently buys is what we’d call sustainable. We think a big part of this is price, so we wanted to create a business that takes away the premium element of sustainability and makes it accessible for any monthly budget."
So what do you do differently?
“We’re trying to do lots of things different and fix things that are currently broken within the food chain. For sourcing, Good Club partners with sustainable brands and sells their packaged goods - making sure that their eco-credentials are up to scratch, and creating as little waste as possible. And for our new zero waste service, we find ethical, sustainable parters and source bulk products - like CRU kafe organic coffee - and pack them into returnable, reusable pots which can be decanted by our customers and then sent back to us.
At the moment, these pots can be used in our supply chain 35 times. They remove the need for extra cardboard, paper… pretty much everything! We tested this in November 2020, and it went down so well with existing Good Clubbers that we rolled it out to everyone this January. If people continue to buy at the rate they were in November, we will save over 850,000 single use plastic bags per year!"
How does membership work?
“Membership is £30 a year, with the first month free, as a trial. For that, you get free monthly carbon-neutral deliveries and access to over 3000 sustainable products with up to 30% off their retail price. The membership fee helps us run our deliveries and our collect and reuse schemes, which are really important to achieving our sustainable goals."
“Customers get all their bulky staples delivered to the door by carbon neutral delivery, once a month, for free.”
Where do you see your CRU Kafe x Good Club partnership going over the next 12 months?
“We’re so excited to be working with CRU for our zero waste shop. We’re looking forward to bringing our customers the most interesting coffees from all over the world, and you seem to have that nailed! I think a way to go in the future would be limited edition runs, and share our love of truly good coffee with them by providing seasonal choices and other surprises!"
