13.3 Stonyfield’s Social Mission

As social entrepreneurs, Gary and Samuel deeply cared about the environment and family farms long before they founded Stonyfield. Gary knew from the start that he needed more than a vague aspiration that Stonyfield could make money and save the world. He developed a missionA short statement of the purpose of a company or organization. It guides the actions of the organization, spells out its overall goal, provides a sense of direction, and guides decision making. It provides “the framework or context within which the company’s strategies are crafted and executed.” statement to help guide the company. This mission has evolved over the years for Stonyfield but has been consistently focused on sustainability and has remained a foundation that guides company strategy and all decisions and practices.

On mission statements, Gary stated, “Every world-saving (and money-making) business needs a stated mission—a rallying cry that focuses efforts, helps set priorities, and gives all hands a meaning and a purpose. So one night I sat down with a bottle of cabernet and wrote a mission statement that has barely changed since.”Gary Hirshberg, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World (New York: Hyperion, 2008), 23.

In the beginning, as the company struggled to sustain itself financially, Stonyfield fulfilled its mission primarily directly through its product. Organic yogurt was a product that was produced without pesticides and other harmful chemicals and was therefore better for the environment and healthier for consumers. While Stonyfield had a much broader vision of its social purpose, it simply did not have the financial resources to devote to any other actions to express its social values other than through its product.

From the beginning, the company had to balance business realities with sustainability aspirations. Stonyfield started as all organic but soon had to switch to “natural” milk due to lack of sufficient organic milk supply as its production needs grew. By the mid-1990s, the company was back up to 85 percent organic, with some fluctuations afterward depending on the supply of organic milk. By 2007, the company had returned to its former 100 percent organic (for a significantly larger production base) and has remained there ever since. A more in-depth discussion of natural and organic takes place later on in the case.

Also very early on, Stonyfield learned that they had to match up the business realities of producing a good that consumers wanted to buy while still holding true to their values. For example, at one point, a garden salad–flavored yogurt was introduced, and while the company had high hopes for the flavor and it being a healthful option, it was not popular with consumers and had to be discontinued.

The next generation of sustainability (beyond the organic yogurt product) effort did not occur at Stonyfield until 1990 with the launch of the company’s Adopt-a-Cow program (later renamed Have-a-Cow). The program was formed to educate consumers on the link between food and the environment and the value of supporting family farmers and sustainable farming methods. It had taken seven years, but the company was finally arriving at a place where it could start fulfilling its original broader social mission and the key was having had some financial success.“Meet the Cows,” Stonyfield Farm, Inc., http://www.stonyfield.com/healthy-planet/organic-farming/have-cow/meet-cows. Stonyfield achieved profitability in 1991 and that allowed for new sustainability initiatives for the company.

In 1991, the company opened a farm visitors’ center to help further promote awareness of the family farm and also produced the first Stonyfield Yogurt Cookbook. The cookbook combined marketing with education on the nutritional benefits of organic yogurt.

In 1993, with sales of $12.5 million and strong profitability, Stonyfield was in a position to actively engage in significant environmental initiatives. This included a comprehensive recycling program, an energy retrofit of their facility, and work with the nonprofit Oxfam America to promote sustainable agriculture worldwide. Also in 1993, the company launched a Profits for the Planet program that contributed 10 percent of profits to efforts that helped protect and restore the earth.

As Stonyfield expanded its sustainability programs, it also held true to its values for its products. For example, one new product, the “Frookwich”—vanilla frozen yogurt sandwiched between two whole-wheat, fruit juice–sweetened cookies—was popular with consumers but had quality problems. The cookies become soggy relatively quickly. Stonyfield discontinued the product rather than compromise their values by adding an artificial ingredient that would have prevented the product degradation.

Stonyfield also was the first dairy processor to secure agreements with its milk suppliers to ensure that milk did not come from cows treated with the controversial synthetic bovine growth hormone rBST (or rBGH) after the FDA approved its use. In 2005, Stonyfield became a certified organic producer and all of its products were certified and labeled under the USDA organic seal.

Other examples of product stewardship tied to Stonyfield’s mission included the switch from plastic pint containers to more environmentally friendly unbleached paper pint containers for the company’s frozen yogurt and ice cream.

Stonyfield also assumed a leadership position in addressing climate change. In 1997, Stonyfield became the first US manufacturer to offset 100 percent of the CO₂ from its facilities’ energy use. Stonyfield also partnered with the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1997 to raise awareness of global climate change and developed a guide called Reversing Global Warming: Offsetting Carbon Dioxide Emissions to help other businesses take steps to reduce their carbon footprint.

In 2001, Stonyfield entered, in a significant way, the political arena to give the company a voice in setting national policy on environmental issues. This involved using a public relations and Internet campaign to educate consumers about the negative effects of the White House’s proposed energy bill. Stonyfield used this opportunity to teach consumers and the general public about energy efficiency and other positive steps they could take to reduce their environmental impact.

In 2002, Stonyfield, after the release of the US Department of Agriculture National Organic Standards, published a guide to help consumers understand organic products and the positive impact that supporting organic agriculture could have on the environment. To improve the eating habits of children, the company sponsored organic and all-natural snack vending machines in schools from California to Connecticut.

Also in 2002, the company provided free smoothies to commuters stepping off Boston subways to thank them for choosing public transportation. This was part of Stonyfield’s marketing efforts tied to the company’s social mission.

Another “subway marketing” example was in Chicago. In order to keep a new account for a large Chicago supermarket chain, Stonyfield needed to increase its market share from 0.08 percent to 3 percent in three months. Gary Hirshberg himself crafted Stonyfield’s “hand-to-mouth” marketing strategy and distributed free cups of yogurt to Chicago Metro transit riders. Eighty-five thousand containers of yogurt were handed out with a coupon that read, “We salute your commuter ridership and thanks for doing your part to help save the planet.” The coupons reminded transit riders that traveling by train instead of car kept forty-five pounds of particulates per year from spewing into the atmosphere. The strategy worked. Stonyfield received media coverage in every local newspaper and NBC’s Today show Chicago affiliate. Market share jumped to 2.5 percent, enough to keep the account and build a stable market position in Chicago. An added bonus was the hand-to-mouth offensive only cost $100,000, or just 1 percent of the $10,000,000 an advertising agency wanted to charge in order to try to achieve the same share.Gary Hirshberg, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World (New York: Hyperion, 2008).

In 2006, Stonyfield formally put into place its Mission Action Plan (MAP) program under the direction of Gary’s sister and vice president of natural resources, Nancy Hirshberg. MAP set detailed plans and goals for the company’s environmental strategies and programs. It was designed as a company-wide initiative to engage all employees in achieving Stonyfield’s environmental mission and the company’s philosophies and culture. The management saw MAP as part of a transformative change for the company and employees on both a professional and personal level.

Under Nancy’s leadership, high-level teams in each of Stonyfield’s high areas of environmental burden were formed. These areas included sustainable packaging, zero waste, facility GHG emissions, and transportation. Each environmental team was required to complete an annual action plan that set long-term and near-term goals and outlined the steps to achieve the goals. The plans needed to be approved by Gary, Nancy, and Stonyfield’s chief operating officer (COO).

A portion of management compensation was directly tied to meeting plan objectives. MAP turned what was once an ad hoc and sporadic process into a company-wide management system lead by senior leaders across the organization.

MAP required a team charter and specifics on required behavioral and other changes. For example, training was provided, which included measuring the number of computer users using energy savings software settings.

Stonyfield managers were responsible for developing “green leaders”—their employees. Employees received training on environmental issues and ethics.

Teams used specific criteria and assessment tools to measure outcome performance. Outcome measures had to be SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible (see Chapter 4 "Accountability for Sustainability" for a more in-depth discussion of sustainability performance indicators). MAP included a resource assessment and a plan homepage aimed at identifying and correcting any gaps between current human resource skills and what was needed to accomplish the plan (training and team building). MAP required teams to identify obstacles and issues to plan achievement and recommendations to address them.

MAP was a management system and process that helped managers and employees rally around Stonyfield’s sustainability-focused mission. Stonyfield’s overarching mission was driven by five “sub-missions” that paved the way for making sustainability an everyday reality for the company.

The five sub-missions built on one another in a continuous flow of interactions throughout the organization. Stonyfield’s sub-missions constituted essential elements of Stonyfield’s mission, organizational culture, values, and way of doing business. The following were the five sub-missions:

1. Superior products for market leadership
2. Education through products and services
3. Cause-related marketing for success
4. Delivering the mission publically and privately
5. Providing the best possible returns to stockholders