I have selected a local café and store near my local town to focus on, as I’m interested in learning more about small businesses in this specific area (given this relates to my personal goals). The café in question is BetterWorld, which describes itself as a “healthy-living store & organic coffee shop.” Their website states that their goals are to “find products that genuinely do no harm and support good people.” In several ways, this company exhibits good ethics and corporate responsibility through choices made and employee relations.

BetterWorld focuses on sustainable products in both their store and café. The store side of the business carries natural remedies, juices, and bulk cleaning products and toiletries. Such products allow consumers to purchase routinely needed products in a manner that reduces plastic waste. On the café side of the business, they serve ethically sourced coffee, bake many of their pastries on site, and stock a small number of groceries (e.g. cheese and eggs) from local suppliers. Throughout their physical site, they have many statements about how they carry no products from China or other “tyrannical regimes.” In addition, they have a small but dedicated core team of staff who appear to genuinely enjoy working there and the owner frequently works as a cashier to help staff out when they are busy, making the team feel like they are all in this together.

With all that said, there are still a few things the company could do to improve their business model in terms of CSR and ethics. While they do carry local products, for example, they also carry many items that are shipped over great distances (from California and from Europe), where local options do exist. Using local options first, they could further reduce their carbon footprint in greater alignment with their stated mission. The claim that they only stock products that “do no harm” is a little misleading when in fact they likely mean products that have a net positive impact, or minimal harm. Finally, this company is set up to serve the wealthy people of the tristate area (NY/NJ/PA), and their philanthropic efforts serve those same communities (primarily the children of their customers), when their resources could do more to tackle any one of a number of issues impacting folks of lower income brackets in the region.

In sum, this is a very socially and environmentally conscious company that is doing excellent work in terms of CSR and ethics, though there are some (small) areas for growth and improvement.