Environmental sustainability and reducing Southern Glazer’s carbon footprint remains a top, strategic priority for our Company. As an example, Green Teams, comprised of valued employees from many departments, are in place throughout the Company to focus on and implement environmental initiatives. After years of operating with environmental sustainability in mind, in 2022, we took a bold step forward, establishing a cross functional team of leaders to initiate a full baseline and assessment of our environmental sustainability efforts, including benchmarking best practices inside the organization and across the industry.

This extensive baseline exercise highlighted the need to consider fleet efficiency and electrification solutions, as well as energy efficiency tactics and renewables. Enhancing environmental data automation and quality was also determined to be a priority. And, because 90 percent of the impact of the products we sell is outside our walls—the importance of collaboration across our value chain to drive large-scale impact is critical.

This baseline work was the foundation for developing our new 2030 corporate sustainability vision statement:

“Harness the passion of our people, trading partners and communities to take measurable environmental action and contribute to a sustainable, hospitable planet for future generations.”

With this vision in place, the Company then set out to create a strategy, with a focus on setting measurable goals and actionable plans that address our material environmental impact across four strategic pillars:

1. Focusing on engine efficiency, projected supply chain strategy optimization, and a shift to electric vehicles.
2. Optimizing energy efficiency while pursuing onsite and offsite renewable energy solutions.
3. Focusing on low-flow water fixtures to reduce Southern Glazer’s water consumption per employee.
4. Optimizing our most material waste impacts based on where we are today.

While this strategic work outlined above was underway, in April 2022, we simultaneously launched a Company-wide environmental sustainability idea competition. The competition was part of Southern Glazer’s Idea Distillery program, which crowdsources employees’ ideas for innovative ways to solve business challenges. The objective of this Idea Distillery challenge was to identify implementable ideas to help our Company contribute to a more sustainable future.

After reviewing 100 ideas and identifying seven finalists, the following winning ideas were selected to address the Company’s environmental footprint by reducing water, waste and energy usage.

Every channel has a slightly different audience. LinkedIn is more suited to hiring, Facebook to general business, and Instagram is ideal for businesses that have a very visual story to share.  

 
If you aren’t on any channel, start small. It might benefit you to ask a social media strategist to tell you where to focus your efforts. However, the first step is to make sure that any information that is currently available on any channel or online at this moment is accurate. Then only activate new channels as time permits. Launching a Facebook page won’t be helpful if you or your staff doesn’t have time to monitor it and keep it fresh. 

 
What consumers expect to see  
So how up-to-date and trustworthy are your social media channels? Review the list below and then visit all your sites to verify whether the critical information is present.  
 
Off-premise business information 

• Phone number and email address: Since many business owners fail to keep their websites updated, people often have more confidence in the information posted on social channels.

• Curbside service, call-ahead, online ordering and delivery options: Have you expanded shopping options to include any of these? Your customers will want to know. 

• Changes in hours: Are your operating hours different now than pre-COVID?

• Inventory shortages: Use social media to post updates around product availability. Posts indicating shortages (and when supplies are coming in) are a great way of showing customers that you are paying attention to their needs. Plus, you just might show up in searches for that product. 

• Mask wearing considerations & cleaning policies: Concerned consumers want to know what you’ve put in place. (If you are requiring masks, we recommend providing masks near the door.)

On-premise business information

Your on-premise consumers expect to see the same information as that listed for Off-Premise along with:

• Seating limitations or reservation requirements 

• Menu and pricing changes 
  Keeping up with all aspects of social  
  Adding in social media to all you do as a business operator can feel overwhelming, but it’s a key part of running a business today. The best way to manage your social media is to incorporate it into your regular business routines. The advantages of social media can far outweigh the time spent and luckily social media is designed to help you be responsive, through the use of alerts, cross channel integration platforms, and other digital tools. Here are some tips to consider as you begin: 

• Designate an owner for your social activity. If you don’t have a marketing staff, there may be someone that loves engaging on social media who may even enjoy taking it on.  

• Activate alerts and notifications on each active channel so that your social owner (and you) are aware when posts, reviews, and inquiries come in. That way you can respond quickly, even if it’s with a simple message stating that you’ll be in touch soon to collect more information. 

• Create starter responses that can be pasted in when different types of comments are posted. This means you don’t have to craft responses from scratch, but simply tailor slightly each time you use them.  

• Add a reminder on your calendar to take a look at your Google Business page once each month, at a minimum. 

• Read up on innovative services like Instagram’s food delivery service. 

• Integrate your social media channels into your email marketing strategy.