💥 #12 - Meet the Brands: Talking Pizzas and Planetary Boundaries with Ooni

Featuring Kate Upshon, Head of Regenerative Business and Lina Baumstark, Regenerative Business Strategy & Innovation Manager at Ooni.

Ooni was born out of a desire to make amazing pizza. However, with husband-and-wife co-founders Kristian and Darina’s background running an education company promoting creativity, innovation and problem solving, is it any surprise that they are taking a holistic view of what amazing pizza means? It’s not just about the right ingredients, the best oven, equipment, methods and recipes…it’s also about the community and the impact on the environment. Any amazing pizza company that’s worth its weight in flour can’t just tread lightly on this planet, can’t just be sustainable…it looks to be regenerative too!

What is a regenerative business? The impacts of business as usual, and the chain reactions that we humans have triggered, are so significant that taking incremental steps towards minimising our harm won’t cut it. A business that is acting regeneratively looks at what the science is telling us is needed to restore nature and reverse the climate change trajectory, and plans accordingly.

In their 2022 impact report, Darina says “We’re realistic about the effort involved in becoming a regenerative business, and we’re honest in saying that we don’t yet know all the steps needed to achieve it”.

Cue the appointment of Kate Upshon as Head of Regenerative Business. 

With Kate having realised in her previous roles - like so many of us - that a standard sustainability approach may work for a business, but fails miserably for the planet, if anyone has the energy and determination to steer a business towards such an ambitious goal, she’s the one!

So I (Laura) travelled up to Edinburgh to meet with Kate and Lina Baumstark, Ooni’s Regenerative Business Strategy & Innovation Manager to find out more about the efforts so far!

Kate and Lina at Ooni HQ in Scotland. Source: Own.

👉 So Kate, what was it like coming into Ooni and taking on an existing impact strategy? Did you have a vision as you came in? 

I think I was given a bit of a gift actually in the sense that the business had already set its ambition to become a regenerative business. I came in with that brief: How do we make [the regenerative business ambition] happen? So it's actually much more a process of aligning the activities that were already happening, which were pointing us in the right direction with the longer term vision and ambition to become a regenerative business, and articulating the strategy and plan to think about how those two things then meet. With some solid metrics in the middle of course!

👉 Let’s dig into Ooni’s frameworks for regenerative business… Did you know that you wanted to focus on a particular framework before you got here? 

Kate: Yeah, I had a pretty good sense of what was out there in the world that was interesting and could be a useful contribution for our business strategy and plan. We looked at a relatively recent one called Positive, which is very interesting and I think has some value. It provides a qualitative framework and also works well as an introduction for those who are very new to regenerative business. However we are looking for something more defined, structured and quantified to get us all the way there, rather than just get us started. That is why we are using the Future-Fit Business Benchmark. 

The Future-Fit Business Benchmark identifies  23 ‘Break-Even Goals’ which are the minimum that a company must do to ensure it causes no harm to people and planet, and 24 ‘Positive Pursuits’ which are things a company may do to create value for people and planet. The Break-Even Goals are accompanied by a set of progress indicators, each expressed as a percentage. These are designed to help any business identify risks, set interim targets, prioritise actions, anticipate trade-offs, and track progress. In theory, a business that achieves all Break-Even Goals is sustainable and the Positive Pursuits indicate regenerative practices. A company can be regenerative in one area and still not sustainable in another.

For us, there is a very strong quantification element which comes from the positioning of all of our thinking in the context of planetary boundaries, and Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics: the concept of a safe operating zone in which the Earth’s systems are in balance and the planet is able to thrive. In the words of Kate Raworth - meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet. We look at this at a conceptual level and strategic level giving us long-term vision and direction, but we also use it at a practical level, what we can do based on today’s world, measuring progress and giving clarity using available data.

Are you mainly using Future-Fit as a framework or are you using it as a practical tool?

Kate: Both! We're still in the earlier stages, I would say, so the way that we're using the benchmark right now is best described as a primary architecture for our strategy. The framework is a change model, if you like, or a kind of regenerative business plan to move from a degenerative business model to a regenerative business model. Our strategy is very much built around the core substantive content of the benchmark but adapted for Ooni. The one thing about the benchmark that is possibly the most valuable is the degree of rigour and thought that's gone into it. We can ensure that we are covering all of our impacts through Future-Fit, but where flexibility is needed the benchmark offers that. For example, we don’t directly control any natural resources so Future Fit’s natural resource management goal doesn't feature necessarily in our goals, but the impact on natural resources that results from our supply chain activities is covered by the procurement goal. It’s a scoping detail, but an important one to be clear on when it comes to implementing our goals.

👉 Let’s talk progress! On your website, you said you're mapping your production suppliers. What exactly do you mean by “mapping” and how's it going?

Kate: Mapping means understanding the links in the (value) chain of our products and services from end to end. Doing this visually really helps to see and begin to understand the processes and the entities involved at every step. We work to understand this so that we can take an informed view of risks and impacts, then prioritise and mitigate where needed. The first step of this process is engaging our tier one suppliers, obviously, and then work through our supply chain tiers. We are making progress with mapping Tier 1 and Tier 2 direct suppliers and have our work cut out for us beyond this.

We have more visibility of some supply chains than others. Different supply chains have different levels of complexity and risks associated with them. The mapping priorities are driven by risk and  followed up with deeper due diligence. As part of taking a more strategic approach in our supply chain we are beginning to shape a systemic approach alongside the risk approach which will be underpinned by a thorough and comprehensive mapping. Our progress on this will be shared in our Modern Slavery Statement.

Have you found out anything very interesting that you didn't expect?

Lina: We’ve recently conducted some LCAs on a selection of products, one of which was our frozen dough balls. From some of our conversations in this work, it was interesting to understand some of the challenges for suppliers in transitioning to regenerative models, especially regenerative agriculture, including for example greater variance in crop consistency. In a market that prizes consistency of product, regenerative practices can be challenging. This makes stakeholder engagement all the more important, both with end customers and throughout supply chains.

Photo from the launch of Ooni Groceries. Source: Ooni

👉 Awesome to hear you’re doing LCAs - you don’t know what you knead to fix until you know what’s going on! Are you hoping they will inform your carbon reduction plans?

Lina: With five LCAs completed across our oven and groceries range we have a view to the future and where the product portfolio could go. We are evaluating across a range of different environmental criteria, and drawing some learnings that will ultimately inform our plan to reduce. Not only GHG emissions but other factors such as land use, water use, etc. The carbon element will inform our GHG reduction strategy but the other elements are important to make sure we fall in the trap of carbon tunnel vision, and ensure any action plans are created in the context of planetary boundaries and the different levels of overshoot.

Are you using a software tool for your LCAs or are they carried out by consultants? Are they helping you quantify your scope 3 emissions?

Lina: It is fully consultant led at the moment but I would like to think we've been pretty involved in the process. It's been quite interactive in terms of collecting data and trying to understand how that data feeds into their LCA modelling. Ultimately we are presented back with the results but we do have plans to build an internal tool to allow us to do some calculations ourselves.

We have been able to capture all scope emissions for 2022, which is coming out in the impact report this year and we are currently in the process of gathering that for 2023 as well.

Plenty of companies are measuring and primarily focusing on offsetting - I saw that you have invested in nature-based solutions in the past. Is that something you plan to do more of in future?

Kate: For the future we are looking to balance continuing to invest in carbon removal to help the market mature, but with our main focus on elimination of carbon in our own business.

👉 Let’s talk workplace culture! Ooni has quite an international footprint. Has it been easy to engage the team far and wide to drive forward the strategy?

Kate: I would say resounding yes! I think it is something that has been hugely important to everyone at Ooni, from the founders and leadership team to the teams in all of our offices. There's just a lot of enthusiasm, desire for knowledge and desire to be involved. There’s a collective conviction that we need to pursue this agenda and it really feels like it matters to everyone.

Lina: One of the things that excites me the most is the sense I get from Ooni around the investment that they are willing to make this happen. There's a lot of work going on at the moment to rethink how we finance the strategy. We're excited to have space and finance to innovate and identify forward thinking initiatives. The most exciting part for me is that there seems to be a real hunger for it to not only be something we have to do because it's the right thing to do, but it's also to be innovative and pioneering. One of Ooni’s five values is innovation, so it really feels like it’s a ‘lived’ value.

Kate: It is great to bring the conversations that really need to be had to the executive team and the founders. The opportunity for privately owned business in this space is really exciting. Public companies are so constrained by market and shareholder expectations, and many are so large that I wonder if it’s even possible for them to do what’s really needed. To Lina’s point, we love being able to amplify the curiosity and genuine interest from the leadership team and think about what goes beyond product innovation. We ask: what does innovation in our internal governance look like? What does innovation in our employee strategy look like?

👉 That sounds great! Looking back - do you have any learnings to share or practical advice for our readers? Any partners you’d recommend?

Kate: We are delighted to work with Bemari on our LCAs and Net Zero transition plan. We also work with The Reassurance Network to help shape our Modern Slavery Statement and supply chain activities. 

My advice generally is: 

• Don't try and get your people to adopt your company’s values, hire people whose values align with yours.

• Don’t let the business get too distracted with multiple siloed ‘green’ initiatives, provide enough leadership and clarity of direction to make the most out of people’s time and maximise its impact. 

• Really educate everyone so there is informed regenerative thinking across the business - this takes time!

Ooni’s latest pizza oven the Koda 2 Max. Source: Ooni

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💥 Recommended Resources From Lina 💥

• Book: Designing Regenerative Cultures – Daniel Christian Wahl

• Book: Doughnut Economics – Kate Raworth

• Article: Yes, Colonialism Caused Climate Change, IPCC Reports  – Atmos Earth (thanks Kate for the find!)

• Ted Talk: The climate solutions worth funding — now  - Jonathan Foley

• Website: Sustainability Advantage; Free, Open-Source Tools For Sustainability Champions  

• Paper: Circular Economy Target-Setting – UCL

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What Next?

• Make a pizza, obviously! Try this classic pizza dough recipe.

• Watch: Grab a slice of Ooni, the recording of their special event which goes into more detail about their products and updates on their journey to become a regenerative business.

• To read more about Ooni’s impact journey, check out their impact report here.