Cook has partnered with the University of Oxford to test the effectiveness of real-world interventions on consumer attitudes towards purchasing food with a lower carbon footprint.
The interventions being trialled include changing the placement of products in store, delivering environmental point of sale communications, offering discounts on vegan and vegetarian meals and adding new labelling that flags recipes with the lowest carbon footprint.
The business said that the goal of the research was to support consumers who wanted to eat more sustainable diets by gathering real world data and using it to assess the success of various measures.
The Oxford team have also provided the company with detailed analysis of the environmental impact of each of its meals including carbon, water and land use data.
It comes as Cook attempts to reduce its carbon footprint by encouraging customers to eat less meat.
In the past few years, the company has seen vegetarian meals grow from around 5% to 20% of sales, with plans to reach 30% in the future.
“The University of Oxford is a trusted household name, associated with rigour and scientific excellence,” said Cook head of sustainable food Andy Williams. “When communicating complex information to customers we believe these attributes in a partner are extremely valuable.
“They’ve provided trusted and robust data on the environment impact of our meals and we’re excited to work together to explore how best to share this information with customers so they can factor this into their decision making.”
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