Secrets To Restaurant Success With Kaj Török of Max Burgers

Carl Jacobs, Apicbase CEO sits down with Kaj Török, Chief Sustainability Officer of Max Burgers, to talk about the many benefits of becoming a sustainable company. 

Max Burger is at the forefront of sustainability. Not only is the company climate-positive, its sustainability efforts boosted sales by as much as 900%.

Watch Episode 11 with Kaj now!

Here are some golden insights from their conversation.

♻️ Find the green balance

Avoid greenwash and greenhush. Greenwash is making misleading environmental claims while greenhush is keeping quiet about your sustainability efforts. Both are dangerous.

📣 Market the products/services that are sustainable

Let the people know. Promote it. If you don’t market these things, we’re not going to fix the climate.

📅 Think long-term

Create a business plan that will help your company last for several generations. When you think long-term, sustainability will be baked in the strategy automatically. You’re building a business for the future, today. 

🍔 Create green products that reduce carbon footprint

Max Burger increased total sales of green burgers by 900% in 7 years – their biggest and most successful product launch to date.

🌍 Build a climate-positive menu

Measure the whole value chain from your farmer’s land to your guests’ hands and work hard to reduce carbon emissions along that chain.

🌱 Measure, reduce, remove

Start planting trees to offset carbon emissions. We need to remove more carbon dioxide than what is emitted today.

🐄 Focus on the bigger culprits

To reduce carbon footprint significantly, focus on the big emitters. Max focuses on reducing beef consumption, which is responsible for 50% of their value chain carbon emissions.

💥 Calculate the impact of your efforts

Focus on sustainability initiatives that give the most bang for your buck. What activities are driving the most financial success?

💶 Being climate-positive yields great ROI

Max spends 0.4% of their total turnover to plant trees and pursues sustainability efforts that add at least 10% to sales. It’s a 1 to 10 return on investment.

🔎 Conscious customers pay more

Being sustainable attracts conscious consumers who are willing to pay more for a bigger value.

👍 Help guests make the right choice

Make it easy for customers to find good sustainable options, so they can reduce their climate impact. 

🚚 Find the right suppliers

Change or negotiate with suppliers to align with your sustainability programs and help you achieve your climate targets

🚪 Being sustainable opens doors

If you pursue sustainability, you can partner with top locations looking for sustainable concepts to work with. And there are more and more of them.  

💰 Being sustainable reduces costs

Max has a 1% food waste in their own restaurants. Such a low number drastically reduces food costs and boosts profits.

🔮 Create a business model for the future

Changing to a sustainable business model will ensure you are innovative enough to align with what future society needs.