US review platform Yelp and vegan meat alternative producer Impossible teamed up to showcase and support local diners across the US. The partnership named the country’s top 30 diners and promotes Impossible’s new meatless pork sausage, along with some of Yelp’s small business products: Yelp Connect (to keep customers informed of new changes within a business), Business Highlights (to shine the spotlight on unique offerings) and Yelp Waitlist (to help ensure restaurants manage capacity and maintain social distancing measures). Yelp and Impossible are supplying the 30 restaurants one month of free access to Yelp’s products and free Impossible sausages to serve guests, to help them boost sales and operate safely amidst COVID-19.
You can’t see our faces but FYI: Our eyebrows are raised. Yelp refers to diners and other small businesses as “the heart and soul” of America, but the company isn’t exactly known for treating them with love – in fact, a 2019 documentary deemed Yelp the Billion Dollar Bully for its extortionate advertising fees. Not to mention that, as a billion dollar company, offering the 30 diners just one month of access to Yelp products feels...stingy.
Still, the way this campaign weaves social and environmental sustainability together deserves a shout. Yelp and Impossible are helping local diners tune into prominent consumer trends (their announcement shared compelling stats, showing how more consumers are embracing plant-based meat alternatives) to boost business. And, by encouraging more restaurants to embrace meat alternatives – meat production, in case you weren’t aware, is BAD for the planet – the partnership is spurring environmental responsibility. Yallah Coffee in the UK also adopted a blended social/environmental approach by adopting sailboats to transport coffee beans: opting not to use shipping containers with massive carbon footprints, while saving enough money to pay growers above-average rates in the process.
How can your brand seamlessly integrate social and environmental responsibility into its operations, or for its next initiatives? How might you balance and consider both equally?
Stay healthy,
The TrendWatching content team
