Dive Brief:
- Thrive Market unveiled Tuesday new quality standards for all products sold on its online market.
- Called Thrive Market Approved, the standards include ensuring all products are non-GMO, follow ethical practices, are sustainabily sourced and more.
- These types of standards are cornerstones for specialty grocers as they look to appeal to shopper demand for sustainable and healthy products.
Dive Insight:
Thrive Market’s new standards apply to all products sold on the grocer’s online marketplace, including partner products as well as its private brand.
Under the new standards, all items sold on Thrive must be non-GMO and free of more than 1,000 restricted ingredients, including artificial flavors, antibiotics, synthetic nitrates and nitrites, and parabens.
Thrive Market Approved also ensures brand partners follow ethical practices like “fair pay and treatment for workers, strict quality standards, and safe working conditions,” per Thrive’s website.
Thrive said it prioritizes seals like Fair Trade Certified, Global Animal Partnership and Leaping Bunny.
Thrive Market warehouses are already True Certified for Zero Waste, and the company noted it only uses carbon-neutral ground shipping.
Thrive claims it is the first grocer to be certified as a public benefit corporation, allowing the company to prioritize social mission pursuits and “take into account factors that don’t typically impact a company’s bottom line,” like quality standards, a Thrive spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
As shoppers continue to seek out health-focused foods and prioritize sustainable practices, specialty grocers are finding ways to guarantee their stores and products meet these needs.
Whole Foods Market, for example, recently broadened its standards for animal welfare and third-party certifications for meat products sold in stores and, at the end of last year, debuted a new pollinator policy to ensure the grocer’s suppliers adhere to more environmentally friendly practices.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated how many products sold by Thrive Market are certified organic. Not all of the e-grocer’s goods are certified organic.
