HowGood Will Change the Way You Grocery Shop
We try to eat the rainbow. We buy organic. And we buy local whenever we can. Yeah, you could say we consider ourselves savvy sustainable grocery shoppers, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re more like grad school-level savvy. HowGood is about to give us all PhDs in navigating the aisles by helping us sort out farmers’, producers’ and manufacturers’ ethical practices. And they just raised $2 mil in funding to do it.
The app doesn’t just show you if the item is local and organic, it also tells you whether the animals were treated humanely, whether workers were paid fair wages and whether the food was produced sustainably.
On the research end of things, HowGood has developed its own rating system for the food industry, the data from which it licenses to independent grocers throughout the US. They rate food producers and their products on over 60 factors to judge their “goodness,” with the end goal being helping shoppers make smarter, more sustainable food choices. Beyond the ingredients and how workers are treated, HowGood even ranks factors you might not even consider, such as the company’s carbon footprint or their treatment of hazardous waste.
Despite the complicated rating process, the app is incredibly easy to use. You can either read through product lists or scan barcodes while shopping. Each product will have a rating of one, two or three globes, indicating just how good it is. When HowGood launched, only 6% of products listed earned the three globe “great” rating, and stores have seen a 27% increase in sales of those items.
If you don’t currently shop organically or sustainably, the HowGood app is a great way to get started, and if you do, it’s about to make grocery shopping a whole lot easier. Download the app here!
What factors do you consider when choosing foods? Join the convo below!
(h/t Tech Crunch, Photo via Quirky)