Tag: 3BL

Yum! Brands

Almost all of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Habit Burger & Grill restaurants are owned and operated by franchisees – 98% of nearly 61,000 locations, to be exact. And over 600 of those franchisees gathered in Sydney, Australia, in April for parent company Yum! Brands’ Global Franchise Convention (GFC), traveling as far as 10,500-plus miles to get there. For four days these franchisees, hailing from every continent but Antarctica, shared knowledge and listened to Yum! and its brands’ leadership outline their plans to continue growing iconic restaurant brands globally.

“This four-day event is two years in the making,” Yum! CEO David Gibbs said. “As the world’s largest restaurant company, our scale is unmatched. No one can do what we do, gathering committed, capable and capitalized partners across the globe to share a vision in building the world’s most loved, trusted and connected restaurant brands.”

Here’s what to expect from KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Habit Burger & Grill and Yum! Brands in 2025 and beyond.

The Power of One
Throughout the four days, executives threw out several figures to illustrate Yum!’s size:

• Yum! purchases 1.7 billion kilograms of poultry each year.
• It spends $1.4 billion on dairy products annually, but that’s less than 10% of the company’s overall spend.
• The company employs over 2,000 Digital & Technology employees, and KFC alone creates 60,000 new jobs every year.

Perhaps the most impressive number was the fact that Yum! spends billions in support of franchisees. This investment comes in the form of several initiatives, including the Yum! Franchise Office, which works to partner with the brands and franchisees across the globe to strengthen Yum!’s franchising foundation – from navigating legal contracts and benchmarking financial success – to the complex issues.

Also part of that spend is Byte by Yum!, a comprehensive collection of proprietary Software as a Service, AI-driven products, which simplifies both operations and the customer experience. Byte is a platform built by operators, for operators, and its support staff works as one cross-functional team to ensure that restaurant teams and engineers collaborate in real time to ensure the best experience for everyone. Since Yum! has developed and owns its own tech stack, the benefits to its franchisees are exponential. As Byte by Yum! President Joe Park said at GFC, “If you have a great idea, put it into Byte, and we’ll roll it out to everyone.”

This collaborative spirit speaks to the power of one Yum!. Since it is the world’s largest restaurant company, its purchasing power for poultry, dairy and other goods is unparalleled, securing the best prices for its partners. Innovation, whether that takes the form of technology, marketing or new menu items, is also shared across all four brands. It’s the reason Yum!’s newest brand, Habit Burger & Grill, has been able to scale so quickly according to CEO Shannon Hennessy, making her new mantra “more magic, more margin.”

Hospitality, Powered by Byte

In February, Yum! announced Byte by Yum!, and at GFC, franchisees got a close-up look. Byte by Yum! President Joe Park identified a clear need for the platform as many restaurant general managers were making decisions based on their experience and intuition. While mainly good, the time it took to make those decisions, he said, could’ve been used to create a better experience for team members and customers.

This echoes what Yum! Chief Marketing Officer Ken Muench said, “The more the world becomes digital, the more we’re going to crave human contact.” It’s also what KFC Global Chief Digital & Technology Officer Judd Knight called “tech-powered hospitality,” automating the mundane so team members can spark joy.

There are Byte by Yum! products in over 25,000 restaurants globally. In the U.S., Yum!’s brands are powered by multiple Byte products, with Byte’s digital ordering platform processing more than 300 million transactions annually. 

When Pizza Hut U.S. experienced its busiest day in its history during the NFL’s Big Game, there were no outages thanks to Byte by Yum! Commerce, and this success and these learnings are being shared amongst all four brands, with Taco Bell benefiting from Pizza Hut’s experience with Byte.

“During Taco Bell’s Taco Tuesday promotional launch, we were breaking global Yum! records,” said Yum! Chief Technology Officer Matthew McDole. “I can confidently say that Byte by Yum! powers Taco Tuesday.”

Go Bold or Go Home

While Yum! was founded in 1997, its brands have a longer history, and as Gibbs pointed out, their history is marked by innovation – like, when KFC invented the bucket, evolving quick-service restaurants from a single-use occasion to a group one and when Taco Bell created the phrase “value menu.” Likewise, Pizza Hut is credited with being the first item ordered on the internet in 1994.

That ingenuity is still manifesting today with Taco Bell’s Live Mas Café, Pizza Hut’s latest restaurant design in the U.S. and Yum!’s newest concept Saucy by KFC, which brings together 11 flavored sauces paired with boneless tenders seasoned with the brand’s signature 11 herbs and spices.

BETHESDA, Md., June 18, 2025 /3BL/ – Tandem Global, a leading NGO working at the intersection of business, climate, water and nature, is pleased to announce the election of a new Chairperson, Emilio Tenuta, Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer of Ecolab, and the appointment of several new members to its Board of Directors.

Tenuta, who succeeds Connie Hergert, Vice President of Ontario Power Generation as Chair of Tandem Global, brings a wealth of experience in sustainability and corporate responsibility focused on environmental stewardship and helping customers operate more sustainably. He shares a deep commitment to advancing Tandem Global’s work with businesses to support long-term positive impacts on our shared environment. Tenuta served on the board of the World Environment Center (WEC) since 2019 and played a pivotal role in combining WEC and Wildlife Habitat Council to form Tandem Global earlier this year. In his role as Chair, he will help guide the strategic direction of the organization during a time of exciting growth and opportunity.

“We are thrilled to welcome Emilio as our new Board Chair,” said Margaret O’Gorman, CEO of Tandem Global. “He brings exceptional leadership and a clear vision for the future of Tandem Global as we are positioned to expand our network and share our proven strategies and expertise in supporting corporate actions for nature. We are also excited to welcome our new board members whose diverse perspectives and expertise will strengthen our ability to deliver on our mission.”

Joining the board are:

• Heather Brown, Vice President, Environment, Health and Safety, Ontario Power Generation
• Peter J Dulik, Global Head of Occupational Safety and EHS Management Systems, BASF
• Lynn Anne Sanguedolce, Senior Principal and Manager of Water, Waste, Land & Biodiversity, ExxonMobil
• Claire Schachter, Of Counsel, Beveridge and Diamond
• Steven Tomaszewski, Global Director, Environmental Operations, General Motors

“I’m honored to step into the role of Board Chair at Tandem Global during such a pivotal time,” said Tenuta. “The urgency and relevance of our mission have never been clearer. I’m inspired by the dedication of our board and leadership team, and I look forward to harnessing our collective strengths to drive bold, lasting impact around the world.”

For a full list of Board Members, visit Our People page.

About Tandem Global

Tandem Global (formerly Wildlife Habitat Council and World Environment Center), provides the know-how and the network to move business and the environment forward, together. Across sectors and at all levels of its 100+ member organizations, Tandem Global works to facilitate long-term and lasting impact on all aspects of our natural world. Tandem Global connects leading thinking with practical solutions that positively impact climate, nature, and water. From field operations to boardrooms and beyond, corporate leaders turn to Tandem Global for impact strategies and resilient solutions that can support a better future. Tandem Global is headquartered in Washington, D.C., USA, with locations across the U.S., in Latin America and Munich, Germany. For more information visit tandemglobal.org.

Throughout the United States, towns and cities of all sizes are responding to the challenges posed by climate change by implementing solutions to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint and address climate risks. Focusing on building decarbonization in their communities not only supports environmental efforts, it also helps cities build a strong economy, jobs and a healthy community for residents. 

If you are a municipality just getting started on your decarbonization journey, you probably have a lot of questions. Veolia North America partnered with Climate Mayors to develop a clear roadmap that outlines a practical approach to building decarbonization that balances cutting carbon emissions with reducing costs for both public and private stakeholders.

In this blog, we’ll outline each step on the roadmap to building a cleaner future through government action on building decarbonization. To learn more about these steps and see case studies from cities across the United States, download the full guide here.

Step One: Setting Goals and Establishing Baselines

Before municipalities can begin taking action to reduce their carbon footprint, they should establish a baseline understanding of their current building emissions. It’s important for municipalities to know what building decarbonization targets are realistic while still setting an ambitious and achievable goal.

First, municipalities should conduct a thorough inventory of buildings to better grasp typologies throughout the city, including use, age, energy uses and equipment systems. Creating a baseline of data from existing buildings is critical as it provides municipalities with the information they need to effectively set policies and programs to address building decarbonization. Municipalities should also create detailed plans outlining costs and associated impacts, which will help them build partnerships with local businesses, community organizations and state agencies to increase the likelihood of securing funding.

With this baseline, municipalities can then determine what goals they can achieve in both the short and long term. These goals should align with targets outlined in the Paris Agreement, as well as state climate targets and other established benchmarks.

Step Two: Focusing on City-Owned Assets

Municipalities are often significant land owners within their own cities, and thus are well-positioned to lead by example to advance community-wide building decarbonization goals. After gathering the necessary data, the next step for municipalities is to focus on reducing emissions from city-owned buildings. Actions towards this goal could include:

• Developing a reliable building energy management system for using data to measure progress, especially at points of consumption.
• Conducting an energy audit to identify inefficiencies that are contributing to emissions, and practical steps to address them.
• Implementing lighting retrofits of energy-efficient bulbs.
• Installing energy-efficient heat and cooling systems such as ground-source and air-source heat pumps.
• Streamlining management of city assets across agencies to minimize inefficiencies.
• Dedicating resources to address more challenging sources of emissions, such as older buildings with antiquated systems that are difficult to convert to electricity.
• Pursuing electrification and renewable energy sourcing to replace traditional fossil fuels for building energy needs. 

Step Three: Securing Funding and Partnerships

Ask any municipal leader about the greatest obstacle they face in achieving their sustainability goals, and the first answer is most likely to be “paying for it.” While upfront costs are important to consider, the long-term reduction of energy bills to municipalities and consumers will save taxpayer dollars and provide important community co-benefits over the life of the upgrades.

For building decarbonization, municipalities can tap into funding strategies like:

• Self-funded projects with economic return
• Tax-based funding
• Grants and incentives
• Public-private partnerships
• Green bonds

Successful projects often mitigate financial risk through a blend of public, private and philanthropic financing in the form of both grants and loans.

Step Four: Creating Policy Incentives

Adopting clear policies is one of the most important tools local governments have to implement building decarbonization across their community. Policies outline the city’s sustainability expectations, priorities and action plans. Municipalities should also consider public reporting requirements as part of their policy actions, which allows all stakeholders to be fully aligned while also holding all relevant parties accountable.

Policy options for municipalities could include:

• City ordinances
• Incentives and fees
• Green building recognition
• Reporting

Step Five: Developing Your City’s Workforce

Transitioning to a clean economy means more clean energy jobs and a need for more workforce development programs. According to LinkedIn’s 2024 Global Green Skills Report, the demand for trained personnel in green-focused jobs is far outpacing supply, with demand in the U.S. increasing by 9.8 percent from 2023 to 2024, and supply increasing by only 3.1 percent.

Efforts to address the “green skills gap” can begin in a number of ways — whether it’s job-specific training, apprenticeship programs or STEM programs and coursework in public schools and local universities.

Many municipalities have made it a high priority to ensure that low-to-medium income communities benefit from decarbonization strategies. Community nonprofit partners, community colleges and the trades play a central role in training and development for certain clean energy jobs. Municipalities can accelerate community buy-in for building decarbonization initiatives by implementing a stakeholder review board with local housing authorities and nonprofit organizations, in which everyone participating can be part of the process and monitor progress.

Starting Your Decarbonization Journey Today

As the impacts of climate change become increasingly severe and frequent, the need to reduce our carbon emissions is becoming more critical by the day. Municipalities across the U.S. are playing a leading role in implementing building decarbonization solutions to address this need. Through these policies and programs, cities can also drive resident engagement, reduce energy burdens for low- and medium-income communities and lower overall long-term costs.

By following this roadmap, municipalities can build a more sustainable future, with clear and actionable steps for making tangible change in their communities when it comes to building decarbonization efforts.

Expanding operations, whether through new markets, facilities, or consolidation, is an exciting yet complex investment journey. Each new territory brings with it unique regulatory landscapes, cultural nuances, and complexities. Missteps can delay your business investment objectives, increase costs, or even stall your strategic initiatives completely.

To help navigate this uncertainty, many companies turn to tools and expertise that decode these complexities. One example is Antea Group’s EHS Passport, a fit-for-purpose service designed to streamline global compliance planning. But let’s step back for a moment: Why does this matter, and how should businesses approach EHS due diligence during global expansion?

Why Regulatory Readiness Is Critical for Global Investments 

Cross-border operations require more than just translating documents and permits. Regulations vary dramatically between regions—not just in scope, but in enforcement, stakeholder expectations, and cultural norms. For example, worker health and safety standards in Vietnam will differ significantly from those in Germany or Brazil, both in their requirements and how they are applied on the ground.

Companies that fail to account for these nuances may face unexpected inspections, fines, or delays. Worse, they may lose public trust in regions where transparency and community engagement are critical. A comprehensive understanding of local EHS laws, labor expectations, and socio-economic conditions can be a make-or-break factor in securing a lasting market foothold.

Why EHS Passport? 

Navigating Complexity with Confidence: 

Global expansion isn’t just about understanding new market potential; it requires mastering local regulatory environments. Regulations aren’t one-size-fits-all. What applies in one country may not hold true in another. EHS Passport decodes this complexity by providing you with tailored regulatory applicability profiles that highlight the necessary License-To-Operate requirements with visibility on what you need to do and when.

Tailored Regulatory Applicability: 

EHS Passport delivers customized insights, clearly outlining environmental, health, and safety (EHS) obligations relevant to your specific operations. You’ll quickly grasp your responsibilities, from operating permits and compliance deadlines to nuanced cultural expectations that influence regulatory enforcement.

Transaction Confidence: 

Whether you’re acquiring existing businesses or breaking ground on new facilities, EHS Passport compliments your due diligence investment process with essential insights, ensuring your investment is sound from both regulatory and environmental perspectives. It removes guesswork, providing qualitative risk understanding for development of a quantitative liability evaluation for enhancing your position at the deal table that can accelerate your post-acquisition integration.

Consolidation Simplified: 

As businesses grow, consolidating duplicative operations is common. EHS Passport simplifies this process by clearly defining commonalities and discrepancies across multiple sites or regions. This clarity ensures smoother integration, consistent compliance, and operational harmony.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid During Global Expansion 

• Assuming uniform compliance standards: Regulatory definitions of “hazardous waste,” “safe exposure limits,” or “permitting thresholds” vary significantly.
• Underestimating lead times: Permit approvals, community consultations, and environmental impact assessments may take months, not weeks.
• Ignoring cultural dynamics: In many countries, business practices are shaped as much by relationships and local norms as by formal statutes.

Your Roadmap to Sustainable Growth 

The real power of EHS Passport is its ability to streamline the complexity inherent in global operational expansion:

Clear Regulatory Summaries: Concise, precise guidance on regulatory requirements, freeing up your resources to focus on strategic business investment initiatives.

Operational Agility: Adapt quickly to new and changing regulations, ensuring continuous compliance and minimal disruption.

Risk Mitigation: Build long-term liability protection upfront in transaction negotiations. Avoid penalties, compliance bottlenecks, and operational delays by proactively identifying compliance requirements.

Did You Know? 

• Many countries have “silent” permit requirements—you must notify or apply even if you’re not making changes.
• Some regions require “cultural heritage” or biodiversity reviews before land disturbance.
• Regulatory applicability can shift based on changes in business structure, facility size, or even corporate ownership.

Land and Thrive 

The ability to efficiently navigate complex regulatory environments is more than an operational necessity; it’s a strategic advantage. Antea Group’s EHS Passport transforms your expansion journey from potential regulatory hurdles and liabilities into well-mapped, actionable plans, setting your operations up not just for entry, but long-term operational success.

When regulations aren’t all the same, don’t get lost in the details. Let EHS Passport guide your investment initiative and operation integration to safe, efficient, and sustained growth. Questions? Our team is here to help, reach out today!

We are recycling plastic film waste from our production operations through our partnership with Trex, the composite decking manufacturer.

Soil bag trimmings and bags scrapped due to standard quality checks or failures are diverted from landfill through the NexTrex commercial recycling program.

Since October 2024, more than 135,000 pounds of plastic waste has been diverted from our Lawrenceville, Virginia, and Carrollton, Kentucky, sites via the NexTrex program. The recycling program is being rolled out to more of our sites as well.

Trex processes recovered plastic film into flakes, which are then combined with reclaimed lumber to make composite decking, railing and other outdoor items.

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About ScottsMiracle-Gro
With approximately $3.6 billion in sales, the Company is the world’s largest marketer of branded consumer products for lawn and garden care. The Company’s brands are among the most recognized in the industry. The Company’s Scotts®, Miracle-Gro®, and Ortho® brands are market-leading in their categories. The Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, The Hawthorne Gardening Company, is a leading provider of nutrients, lighting, and other materials used in the indoor and hydroponic growing segment. For additional information, visit us at www.scottsmiraclegro.com.

Originally published on NRG Energy Insights

By NRG Editorial Voices

Our company news

• NRG announced record results in Q1 2025, delivering the strongest first quarter adjusted EBITDA in company history, surpassing last year’s record by 30%.
• NRG entered a definitive agreement with LS Power to acquire 18 natural gas-fired facilities, adding approximately 13 GW to NRG’s generation capacity. In addition, NRG will obtain CPower, a leading C&I VPP platform with approximate capacity of 6 GW representing more than 2,000 commercial and industrial customers.
• NRG expanded its footprint in Texas, acquiring flexible natural gas-fired facilities from Rockland Capital, LLC. Adding 738 MW to NRG’s portfolio, the acquisition aligns with the company’s strategy to enhance its ability to meet the growing customer demand for electricity.
• NRG announced its $2.5 million investment in Equilibrium Energy, a company that specializes in using AI to optimize energy systems. This investment underscores NRG’s aim to gain market intelligence and explore solutions to address the grid volatility created by load growth, intermittent renewable generation, and extreme weather events.
• Rasesh Patel, President of NRG Consumer, announced he will retire in May 2025. Patel has been instrumental in integrating Vivint Smart Home and establishing a robust consumer-focused company culture. NRG plans to appoint his successor during the second quarter to ensure a seamless transition.

Insights from our leaders

• NRG leaders participated in CERAWeek 2025, one of the largest global energy forums. At CERAWeek, Larry Coben, NRG Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer, spoke with Bloomberg to discuss the surge in power demand from macrotrends such as AI and data centers. NRG’s Rasesh Patel, Dak Liyanearachchi, Lynda Clemmons, and Travis Kavulla took part in panels exploring how AI is reshaping the energy landscape and ways NRG is adapting to meet growing energy needs.
• Robert Ott, Vice President of Origination for NRG Business, launched a load growth blog series exploring how trends like EVs, AI, and data centers are rapidly increasing energy use and what that means for consumers and the broader energy market.

Our family of brands

• Reliant introduced the Smarter Home Bundle, offering qualifying customers a free Vivint Doorbell Camera Pro and Smart Thermostat, with complementary installation. The bundle includes exclusive access to the Vivint app, offering personalized energy insights and unified control of smart devices. This bundle works alongside Reliant’s Degrees of Difference program, allowing smart thermostats to adjust automatically during peak demand hours to help grid stability.
• Dallas Independent School District (DISD) earned over $578,000 by participating in NRG’s Responsive Economic Dispatch (RED) program. This program allowed DISD to monetize its load flexibility by reducing electricity usage during peak demand. The funds were allocated to the district’s maintenance and facilities budget.

Highlighting our culture

• NRG was honored with the 2025 Competitive Energy Supplier of the Year award by the Energy Marketing Conference. This prestigious recognition reflects NRG’s leadership in serving over 600,000 business sites across all 50 U.S. states and Canada. The award highlights our role as a top-tier energy provider, known for delivering innovative solutions and driving progress across the energy industry.

Giving back to our community

• NRG announced its partnership with the FIFA World Cup 26 Houston Host Committee, bringing seven international soccer matches to Houston’s NRG Stadium. Through the partnership, NRG will host youth soccer clinics with RISE Soccer Club and participate in FIFA Fan Festival celebrations. Reliant and RISE Soccer Club have already hosted a Houston clinic featuring U.S. Soccer legend Clint Dempsey. The company also donated $100,000 to support clinics, scholarships, and new soccer fields for local youth.
• Reliant and the Houston Texans awarded six high school student athletes with $10,000 scholarships through Reliant’s Scholarships for Champions program. For over two decades, this program has awarded more than $780,000 in scholarships to 140 Houston-area students who demonstrate excellence in academics, athletics, and community involvement.

By Mel Campbell

The Regions Tradition is a lot of things. It’s a major golf tournament drawing hall-of-fame golfers from across the world competing for one of the tour’s prize gems. It’s a community event that brings family and fans together for a fun five days at Greystone Golf and Country Club near Birmingham.

And it’s a source of much needed support and funds for countless charities across the state of Alabama.

This year, in addition to generating even more charitable funds (the total will be announced later in 2025), there is a special gift for the tournament’s primary beneficiary, Children’s of Alabama – a mural being painted by event attendees.

In 2023, Regions spearheaded a similar effort in conjunction with the World Games when they were held in Birmingham. Today, that mural is hanging on the wall of a local Birmingham elementary school.

“The Regions Tradition is an opportunity for us to showcase some of our patients, our families to build awareness of the struggles they have,” said Tom Shufflebarger, CEO of Children’s of Alabama. “It creates a lot of excitement and honors our staff by recognizing what they do. And the financial results are critical to maintaining Children’s and making us who we are.”

And Children’s remains an organization dedicated to serving the medical needs of children, regardless of ability to repay, and to providing them with top quality care and services.

“The monies raised for Children’s by the Regions Tradition go to things like the hospital’s Impact Fund,” said Leroy Abrahams, Regions Head of Community Engagement. “When you think about the kids that have benefitted from this, as a result of the tournament, it’s just exciting to seeing the funds in the community being put to such good use.”

Each day of the 2025 Regions Tradition, attendees could paint a portion of the wall. Over the course of the five days the wall will be completed and will soon afterward be delivered for display at the hospital.

Check back at the end of the tournament to see the completed mural and when it’s installed at Children’s of Alabama.

Read more Regions Tradition 2025 articles on Doing More Today.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re proud to share that 100% of our employees have access to mental health resources and financial education.

At Griffith Foods, we’re committed to supporting all our employees, their families, and the communities we serve by providing the resources and opportunities needed to thrive mentally, physically, and financially.

We foster the wellbeing and fulfillment of our people and strive to create a workplace where people feel seen, heard, supported, and empowered to succeed both inside and outside of work. When our people are at their best, they innovate, collaborate, and help us deliver on our purpose to blend care and creativity to nourish the world.

Interested in joining a purpose-driven organization that puts people first? Explore opportunities and learn more about our culture at https://griffithfoods.com/careers/

Our Sustainability Journey
At Griffith Foods, we are committed to driving positive impact through a regenerative mindset. Sustainability is connected to everything we do as a business, and by 2030, we are dedicated to significantly improving the future with a singular sustainable business strategy that we call our 2030 Aspirations. To learn more about Griffith Foods and its current sustainability efforts, visit them online and download the 2023 Sustainability Report.

About Griffith Foods
At Griffith Foods, our purpose defines who we are, what we do, and why we exist, highlighting what makes us distinct and authentic in the marketplace. We help our partners meet the evolving needs and desires of consumers in ways that respect and sustain the planet. Our care and creativity mean we’ll find the right mix of global reach and local impact to serve the earth and nourish all of us who call it home.

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60% of children in Kenya can’t count on three meals a day. For children in underserved communities across Africa, education remains the surest path to a more secure future — and yet hunger inhibits learning and optimal development for a majority of the country’s young people. It is much harder to learn on an empty stomach.

Wawira Njiru, Founder and Executive Director of Food4Education, understood from the start that technology was key to scaling up her operation dramatically enough to meet the daily nutritional needs of hundreds of thousands of young learners. Her organization created a deeply tech-based solution to help eliminate hunger and ensure that school-going children have access to a healthy meal.

Food4Education’s innovative Tap2Eat system—a smart payment solution—ensures that children in Kenya receive nutritious meals at school. By using a wearable wristband linked to a mobile wallet, children can easily scan, eat, and focus on learning without worrying about hunger.

Scaling up from 3,000 to over 500,000 meals served daily

In 2018, Cisco awarded the Global Citizen Prize for Youth Leadership to Wawira to create and test this technology. At the time, the organization was feeding 3,000  children a day in Kenya. The funding enabled her organization to scale from feeding 3,000 children a day to 10,000 children a day while also developing their Tap2Eat app and platform.

In 2022, we provided a technology grant of Webex, Meraki, and Cisco Umbrella technologies. Our technology enables Food4Education to collect and use data analytics to enhance their operations and offerings, mitigate cyber threats, and securely connect their operations, platform, and program offerings. We also provided a cash grant to enable further development and scaling of their program to support 100,000 children a day.

Today, over 500,000 children can Tap2Eat lunch at school daily using the Tap2Eat mobile app and wristband. The wristband utilizes Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology to enable seamless transactions, ensuring students receive meals without the need for cash or physical contact.

Sophisticated analytics and technology to optimize outcomes

The system also verifies meal delivery to children and sends real-time data directly to Food4Education’s operational dashboards. This system ensures accurate tracking of meal quantities and uptake, enabling predictive analytics and more effective meal planning for the future.

Parents, philanthropy, and government all contribute to the cost of daily meals—keeping the program steady, scalable, and sustainable.

The effectiveness of the solution is undeniable—and the children are getting nourished in more ways than one. As Wawira puts it, “Every lunchtime, they’ll just go tap, so it gives parents a very high level of visibility,” she said, “but it also gives children a sense of ownership and a sense of excitement.”

In schools that serve meals through Tap2Eat, truancy is almost zero. Academic performance is improving, and attendance has increased by up to 30% in many areas.

Collaborating to achieve exponential impact

Cisco’s partnership with Food4Education, the innovative use of technology, and a dynamic business strategy based on community-centric solutions to longstanding challenges have helped the program grow and thrive.

Food4Education is a social impact partner that embodies our shared values around basic nutrition and quality education for everyone, while also demonstrating the power of our incubator model for nonprofits. Through our unique approach, we scout for great ideas and dynamic founders, and then support their early-stage, tech-enabled concepts through implementation, validation, and scaling.

For Cisco, funding great ideas is only the beginning. We bring the best of Cisco—our technology, our expertise, and our innovation—to the relationship. Setting our non-profit partners up for long term success and sustainability is always our goal. And it’s a goal shared with Wawira and Food4Education—as she puts it: “I could write a book about our wonderful relationship with Cisco!”

She explains, “Cisco has given us follow-on funding to improve our use of technology across the organization, from using Meraki across our operation, finding ways to connect all our devices that are used in Tap2Eat across a huge network of schools, to helping us in terms of our conferencing and our ability to communicate and collaborate better.”

See the story in motion

With Cisco’s support, Food4Education is changing hundreds of thousands of lives every day—and counting—fostering the next generation of learners and preparing them to participate fully in the modern economy. To get the full story, watch our newly released documentary-style video.

View original content here.

Originally published on May 15, 2025 on LinkedIn

Nearly 100 of No Kid Hungry’s biggest supporters gathered at the New York Stock Exchange in May to ring the closing bell and launch their summer campaign — backed by more than $30 million in new investments and a shared commitment to the CEO Pledge to End Summer Hunger.

As a proud No Kid Hungry partner of over 25 years, Sysco is rooting for their continued efforts to close the summer hunger gap, connecting more than 27 million additional kids to food when school is out. It’s inspiring to see the innovation, collaboration, and momentum building across industries to help end childhood hunger — in the summer and beyond.

We’re honored to stand alongside this powerful community of changemakers and look forward to continuing the journey together.

About Sysco

Sysco is the global leader in selling, marketing and distributing food products to restaurants, healthcare and educational facilities, lodging establishments and other customers who prepare meals away from home. Its family of products also includes equipment and supplies for the foodservice and hospitality industries. With more than 76,000 colleagues, the company operates 340 distribution facilities worldwide and serves approximately 730,000 customer locations. For fiscal year 2024 that ended June 29, 2024, the company generated sales of more than $78 billion. Information about our Sustainability program, including Sysco’s 2023 Sustainability Report and 2023 Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Report, can be found at www.sysco.com.

 For more information, visit www.sysco.com or connect with Sysco on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SyscoFoods. For important news and information regarding Sysco, visit the Investor Relations section of the company’s Internet home page at investors.sysco.com, which Sysco plans to use as a primary channel for publishing key information to its investors, some of which may contain material and previously non-public information. In addition, investors should continue to review our news releases and filings with the SEC. It is possible that the information we disclose through any of these channels of distribution could be deemed to be material information.

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