EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Clif Bar & Company’s Kali’s Kitchen, an employee-run sustainable café at Clif’s headquarters, is the first to receive Gold certification in sustainability and nutrition from the United States Healthful Food Council’s (USHFC) non-profit organization Eat REAL. Eat REAL, or Responsible Epicurean Agricultural Leadership, holistically audits food service providers’ front and back operations, which includes sourcing, cooking practices, and menus options, using a points-based system. With a score above 85 percent, Kali’s Kitchen is the only Gold certified corporate food service nationwide, and the first food provider in the nation to receive this level of certification.
“At Clif, we believe in producing good food built with a purpose for our community. That’s why Kali’s Kitchen sources local ingredients, emphasizes in-house cooking practices, and aims to minimize our environmental impact,” said Scott Erickson, executive chef of Kali’s Kitchen. “We’re thrilled to be REAL Certified Gold and will remain committed to healthy, transparent, and sustainable food practices.”
Similar to LEED green building certification, the Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance, and the Non-GMO Project, REAL Certification’s goal is to affect change in the food and food service industry. Eat REAL developed the REAL Certification to be a mark of excellence for food providers committed to holistic nutrition and environmental stewardship.
“Clif Bar has been at the leading edge of employee foodservice for years, through their private employee restaurant ‘Kali’s Kitchen,’” said Eat REAL COO, Caesare Assad. “Kali’s Kitchen provides an exceptional case study for how foodservice can be an integral part of company culture - impacting not only employees’ performance, but also the local food system at large.”
Eat REAL recently released their updated audit standards, which include an increased focus on animal welfare, enhanced survey objectivity, and a Silver/Gold/Platinum tiered scoring system. The audit was developed by a panel of academic, industry and government experts as well as chefs and restaurateurs and is conducted by REAL-registered dieticians. Other food service establishments previously evaluated by Eat REAL include True Food Kitchen, NOPA Restaurant, Stanford University, and the University of San Diego, totaling to 500 different organizations nationwide. However, Clif Bar & Company is currently the only institutional food service provider to have completed the updated audit. This certification is intended to generate awareness and ignite a dialogue around the importance of building a healthy food system and establishing REAL food practices across the industry.
About Clif Bar & Company:
Clif Bar & Company crafts nutritious and organic food to feed and inspire adventure, including the CLIF® BAR® energy bar; CLIF Kid®, Nourishing Kids in Motion® and LUNA®; The Whole Nutrition Bar. Family and employee-owned, the company is committed to sustaining its people, brands, business, community and the planet. For more information on Clif Bar & Company, please visit www.clifbar.com, check out our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/clifbar and follow us at www.twitter.com/clifbar and www.instagram.com/clifbar.
About Eat REAL:
REAL Certified® is a program of Eat REAL®, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit dedicated to transforming America’s food system and fighting diet-related disease. Launched in 2012, REAL Certified is a nutrition and sustainability best practices certification program aimed at realigning the food industry’s incentives with consumers’ health interests. The organization has certified over 500 restaurants, corporate cafes and college dining services in 32 states, with financial support from the Tennessee Department of Health, the Park Foundation, the Mary Black Foundation, the Campbell Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President’s Grant Fund of the Princeton Area Community Foundation. More information can be found at www.eatreal.org.