To our Splendid community and team -
We took a pause last year to reflect on how we needed to step up not only as a brand but also as humans. Taking a serious look internally, we identified blind spots — in ourselves, in the brand, and in how we operate day to day — and made commitments for how we should evolve. Today, it's time to take stock of our progress and identify continued areas of improvement.
As a provider of nourishment and a player in the wellness space, we feel it’s important to state that race is a critical factor in accessibility to healthy food. Fighting back against this is dedicated, everyday work that requires sustainable initiatives and structures.
Because our work was catalyzed by George Floyd's murder, we began by focusing energy on the Black community; however, our commitments over the past year have evolved to more formally consider food and social justice for all marginalized communities. Our anti-racism work starts within the walls of the organization — in how we hire and operate our business — and extends through our communication and product development. The goal is for every person to feel at home with Splendid Spoon regardless of race, color, religion, or gender identity.This is hard and beautiful work -- the varied experiences and voices who have joined the Splendid Family as customers and team members over the years make us who we are. Naming our anti-racism commitments is simply doing our part to be in a healthy relationship with you, our valued community.
In good health,
Nicole Centeno, Founder and co-CEO
Our Commitments are as follows:
1. Examining our Hiring & Administrative Practices
Last year, we made a commitment to have equitable racial representation in each layer of the business. Here is our updated report:
* Data self-reported at time of hire
* 77% of our 22 employees identify as female
Our internal work over the last year has focused on creating a fair and unbiased hiring process. We’ve put this into practice over the last year in a few different ways:
- Built a self-led task force to scrutinize our hiring practices (language screening on job descriptions, structured interviews with multiple teammates, and work-product focused hiring criteria)
- Attended anti-bias training led by the Perception Institute. We’ll continue to do this on a bi-annual basis to help support new team members as they join the organization.
We’ve also made administrative changes for our team members:
- Provide paid half-days on election days
- Observe Juneteenth as a paid holiday to create space for reflection, connection and activism in our communities
Continued Areas of Opportunity
We plan to continue to invest more into team anti-bias training and equitable hiring over the next year with recruiters to help us with executive roles so that we can build more diverse candidate pools.
2. Ensure Everyone Has a Seat At The Table
Progress
As we strive to create a community that represents the diverse plant-based & wellness space, we remain thoughtful about the voices we choose to amplify and include.
- In 2020, we brought Kim Rose, a Black Dietitian Nutritionist, on board to the Splendid team. She’s been extremely influential to how we function as a business, from product development to customer education.
- We also revisited the voices we chose to amplify and include externally on our website, social feed, and in marketing campaigns — specifically by prioritizing Black and Brown (and size-inclusive) models and content creators.
- Within our own Splendid team, we launched an anti-racism committee, to enrich our understanding of how food, agriculture, and resource access have been directly impacted by racism.
Continued Areas of Opportunity
- We continue to work with Kim throughout every step of the business.
- We will continue to work with Black and Brown creators and models.
- Our anti-racism committee continues to meet to educate ourselves and discuss the issues between race and food.
3. Diversify Voices in Food & Nutrition
Progress
This past year, we worked with Korean and Chinese chefs and makers for inspiration as well as ingredient partnerships but are cognizant that we need to do the same with Black chefs and makers.
- Chef HyunJoo Albrecht of Sinto Gourmet provides the kimchi in our Kimchi Fried Quinoa Grain Bowl.
- We worked with Chef Diana Kuan on a Chinese noodle dish recipe which will be launching later this year.
Continued Areas of Opportunity
- Last year, we committed to partnering with a Black chef to amplify their work. We acknowledge that we weren’t able to launch our chef collective this year but plan to do so in 2022.
- As a food brand, we also understand our responsibility to highlight food justice issues across the global food industry and serve as a trusted source of education. We commit to do better here moving forward and use our voice to communicate important current events affecting our industry.
4. Improve Food Access
Progress
We want to continue to be thoughtful in how we drive support to communities and bring to light food issues tied to race. Last year, we committed to donating 600 meals each month either through monetary donations or in-kind meal donations. We discussed working with FoodLove by Might be Vegan in order to tackle the issue of food accessibility within the BIPOC community and look at the accessibility of our product offerings. To date we have contributed:
- 5,500+ meals to FoodLove
- 1,100 meals to Healthy Women Healthy Families
- $12K to God’s Love We Deliver
Continued Areas of Opportunity
- This year, we’ve chosen to partner with Claim Our Space Now, a collective focused on educating, unionizing and mobilizing against white supremacy, and will support their second Annual Pride event, Rally for Freedom: Pride for All Black Lives.
- We’ll be donating $6,000 to their grassroots fund, Project FROM, which focuses on food security among other initiatives for Black and Brown communities.
- We will continue to examine long-term strategies within our own business to make our product offerings more accessible to all.
Questions? Please email us at [email protected]