Green Horizons: New Seasons Market Committed to Sustainability

As 2025’s Retail Sustainability Award recipient, New Seasons educates community, suppliers and consumers with initiatives.

New Seasons Market, Hillsboro, OR, is on a mission to provide consumers with organic and sustainably grown food, but also to educate consumers on the benefits of products and practices that benefit the environment. The initiatives are the reason Produce Business tapped New Seasons as its 2025 Sustainability Retailer of the Year.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, New Seasons just opened its 22nd store, serving Oregon and southwest Washington.

Although organics are a major part of the product assortment, New Seasons also offers conventional groceries and popular food and beverage brands that may be favored by shoppers who haven’t gone all in on organics. The company regards a mix of conventional and organic produce as an opportunity to spotlight the value and benefits of all sustainable products.

New Seasons, whose parent company is Good Food Holdings, rates as Sustainability Retailer of the Year because it works with the growing community, suppliers, and consumers to support a holistic approach to wellness and the environment, while encouraging shoppers and suppliers to explore developments that might even be better.

To demonstrate commitment to its principles, the company has achieved B Corp certification, which requires it to meet stringent standards for performance, accountability and transparency.

Not only that, but New Seasons puts its money where its intentions are, helping to find, and even provide financial support for local growers who are transitioning to organic production or who simply need help scaling up their operations.

Local is also a big part of New Seasons’ focus, both to provide the freshest fruits and vegetables it can, while also cutting down on food miles and related environmental impacts.

WHAT’S IN STORE

New Seasons began as an independent operation 25 years ago and became part of Good Food Holdings as 2019 ended, and is now part of a portfolio that also includes Bristol Farms, Lazy Acres Natural Market, Metropolitan Market and New Leaf Community Markets. Its newest store, a 27,000 square foot operation, is in Hillsboro, OR.

As part of its commitment to environmental stewardship, the Hillsboro New Seasons incorporates cutting-edge dry misting produce technology that creates an optimal high-humidity environment to preserve freshness, while conserving water and reducing waste.

As with all New Seasons Market locations, the Hillsboro store incorporates a free recycling center that accepts materials ranging from clamshells to clear plastics and plastic films, as well as other waste not often accepted in curbside bins.

Athena Petty, the company’s senior manager of sustainability, says New Seasons customers have progressive ideas about food systems. They want to understand where their food comes from, and if it satisfies their preferences, both in terms of sustainability and health.

Although organics are critical, New Seasons has built a high level of trust over the years, so its customers have confidence the company will do all it can to deliver on their preferences for healthful, sustainable and local food. So, organics are important to New Seasons customers, but not a deal breaker.

“That leaves it up to us to really show up and work to continue to have that trust be something they can lean on,” she says.

Petty says organic certified products make up about 69% of New Seasons’ produce section when you look at the entire year. “Our customers have the innate ability to understand that there are also a ton of small farms that we work with directly, especially during ultra-high seasonal produce times where perhaps that farm hasn’t received a certification. But they’re doing organic practices on their farms, and they’re very local.

“So, we’ve tried to support the organic movement, which is extremely important, and also tie our customers in with the folks who are actually growing their food,” she says.

Although some growers aren’t certified organic, New Seasons considers all that a farm has to offer when it is sourcing, with sustainability a key consideration.

“Some of the growers that we work with have just incredible practices,” says Chris Harris, category director for produce and floral. “They’re not certified organic. One of our berry growers has this great program where they work with the city of Hillsboro to get all the leaf mulch that’s collected by the city, and the city, they were actually paying to take it to the dump, and now they take it to the grower for free, so the city doesn’t have to pay for it.”

e says the grower composts it, and then uses it as a mulch, putting a thick layer of it at the base of their caneberries.

“It produces this incredibly rich, healthy soil that’s got all kinds of microorganisms, real living soil. So, they don’t have to put any fertilizer on their soil anymore. They’re not certified organic, but it’s just an example of the incredible kinds of sustainable practices that we’re really interested in supporting,” says Harris.

THE LOCAL ANGLE

Local produce is a big deal to New Seasons’ shoppers. “It’s right up there with organic. I wouldn’t be able to pick one over the other with our shoppers,” says Harris. “The gold standard is local and organic, but we will carry both if we don’t have a local organic option.”

New Seasons is intent on building long-term partnerships with local growers.

“We figure out what works for us at New Seasons Market and what works for the grower, and then we try to build on that,” says Harris. “We have a really robust planning program with our growers. Obviously, we’re in communication a lot through the season, but then we meet in the off-season so that we can go over how the season went last year, what worked for you, what worked for us. How can we work together to find that partnership so that we both win.”

The desire to help shoppers understand what goes into their food extends to New Seasons’ private label Partner Brand, which is a foundation for company efforts to boost suppliers who align with its priorities.

“We call it Partner Brand because it’s a more transparent and direct relationship-based brand when you especially look at other white label programs or products. We’re talking about who our growing partner or producer partner is on the label. Quality, local and sustainability are kind of the tenants that we’re most proud of for our brand. It’s not only dollar value,” says Petty.

When the company established the Partner Brand, New Seasons wanted to create something that reflected the mission of the organization as a whole.

“What we did was we made a commitment to applying 1% of our sales of the Partner Brand to our partners to help essentially keep a really robust regional food system,” says Petty. “These small growers have to go through so much. And not just growers, but producers, small brands, and to help kind of establish a no- or low-interest loan fund to help them get on their feet or get that next piece of equipment that will help them really scale up.”

The program has developed over the past several years, with New Seasons establishing several loans and relationships with vendor partners to help them, for example, set up a packaging line.

Petty says the program helped smaller suppliers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Money dried up,” she says. “They all of a sudden didn’t have some of the restaurant partnerships that they might have had, so it played a really interesting role during that time.”

SUPPORTING REGENERATIVE AG

Fast forward a few years, and New Seasons started to see, especially in the Portland area, a number of these loan funds were specifically focused on BIPOC producers (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), female underserved producers, and similar subsets of food makers.

“We started thinking about this elevated aspect of sustainability that we wanted to have in the Partner Brand and started to re-envision what our fund would look like,” Petty says. “So, we transitioned from a low-interest partner brand fund to our connection and collaboration with Zero Foodprint, where we’re helping fund projects on farms and ranches to essentially implement organic and regenerative practices.”

Zero Foodprint combats climate change by working with members of the food and beverage industry to support regenerative agriculture. As explained by Zero Foodprint, the organization operates by soliciting small donations across the food system to fund farm projects that draw carbon from the atmosphere and store it underground, resulting in better food, thriving farms, and a restored climate.

In working with Zero Foodprint, New Seasons can help connect growers and ranchers to loans up to $25,000, as it has shifted some funding emphasis to farm resilience and healthy soil practices.

“Regenerative agriculture is something that has gotten a lot of buzz over the last few years, and we’ve really been paying attention to what does that mean in practice,” explains Petty. “What does that certification mean? How does it differentiate itself between organic, and what does that mean actually to our growers?”

“We’re still gathering information about how the program works for our partners and for us,” says Petty. “But it’s been interesting to see how our support system has evolved now that it’s called Restore Northwest, and in partnership with Zero Foodprint.”

Katie Schoen, New Season’s director of communications, points out that although the company has become more deeply involved in funding through Zero Footprint, it has not abandoned its own ongoing partner funding for those suppliers who New Seasons has supported.

LENDING A HAND

One example of New Season’s direct support of a produce partner is the work it has done with Unger Farms of Cornelius, OR, says Harris. Unger Farms has supplied berries to New Seasons since it opened the company’s first store in Raleigh Hills in 2000.

As New Seasons Market expanded, it outgrew Unger Farms’ capacity to supply all of its stores with berries, and that troubled Harris. New Seasons couldn’t find another local grower who could provide the same quality, so New Seasons began working with Unger Farms on capacity, including providing it with a substantial loan, which generated a sweet return.

“They were able to buy some neighboring property and expand their farm to be able to supply all of our stores,” says Harris. “They actually repaid the loan in berries during the season. It ended up being a real win for both New Seasons and Unger Farms.”

SHARING THE STORIES

Customers see New Seasons working with the same farms over and over, and telling their stories, says Petty, and New Seasons works to inform customers about farming’s evolving landscape. “I think that we’re seen as a place where, hopefully, customers can come and find information that’s really relevant to the questions that they have.”

Harris says he’s witnessed a continual evolution at New Seasons over the years, one that’s been positive, both in pacing and leading change for a customer base that wants to learn and embrace practices and products they feel are better for them.

“I think one of the great things about this company, and one of the reasons we’ve been successful, is our ability to adapt and change over time,” he says. “When we started the first store, our produce department was basically a dual-line department. We had organic and conventional side by side, pretty much on almost every product in the department.”

They found customers were much more interested in the organic product. “So over time, we really reduced the amount of conventional produce that we had in the department,” Harris says.

While the stores still offer conventional products, the majority are organic. “We really believe that organic is a more sustainable farming system. So, we continue to be huge supporters of organic, but we do have conventional produce.”

New Seasons doesn’t just stock conventional produce for the sake of having it in stores. Rather, it works with growers to help them when they want to try and make changes in how they operate, even when it’s done incrementally.

“We work directly with those growers,” says Harris. “We really understand their specific practices, and we really know that they’re using sustainable practices. We’ve built a level of trust with our customers, and so we never want to betray that trust. They expect us to have those standards and to be delivering that kind of product to them. We’ve also taken chances on things over the years and some of them have been really surprising.”

For example, New Seasons worked with a small local grower who had great blueberries, but didn’t have a sophisticated packing line.

“They weren’t able to pack their berries in traditional packaging,” says Harris. “So, they pack them in bulk in 10-pound flats for us, and we decided to bring them to market and see what would happen. I had visions of blueberry goo oozing all over the produce department, but it was amazing how our customers reacted to it. They loved it. It was a huge success for us.”

Shoppers look forward to the blueberries and the 10-pound flats. “It has become a huge signature event for us every year,” says Harris.

“It really takes that direct connection, and so that’s something that’s always been really important to us, having that direct connection to the growers,” says Harris. “We’re not buying through third parties.” 

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What is B Corp Certification?

B Corp Certification is a designation that businesses can meet based on high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from supply chain practices, and input materials to employee benefits and charitable giving.

To achieve B Corp Certifications, companies must demonstrate high social and environmental performance by reaching a B Corp Impact Assessment score of 80 or above and passing a risk review, as well as making a legal commitment by changing corporate governance structure in a way that makes the company accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

B Corp companies must embrace transparency by providing information about their performance that can be measured against standards of the certifying organization, B Lab. Then, they must make their standards publicly available on their B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.

Athena Petty, senior manager of sustainability at New Seasons Market, Hillsboro, OR, the 2025 Produce Business Sustainability Retailer of the Year, recently completed the company’s B Corp certification renewal. New Seasons first became a B Corp in 2013 when it was essentially a new concept.

We had a visionary group of people who wanted to be able to use a third party to show and prove that we were doing all the things that we said that we were doing, and to have that outside verification and a standard framework that we could follow to help improve the business.

Athena Petty, New Seasons Market, Hillsboro, OR

B Corp standards are tough, Petty says. “It’s complex. It changes, so it has evolved. There are now six versions, going on seven, and that’s on purpose so that B Corps continue to have to evolve their standards and continue to become more progressive.”

The standards are different depending on the version, says Petty, and none is specifically a grocery store standard. Grocery stores run on a complex business model, she says, with New Seasons having thousands of vendors supplying the store with tens of thousands of products, which makes it more difficult to account for and address the standards involved.

“It is a really difficult thing for our type of business,” she says, but adds, “We have continued to be able to show up and show progress over time.”

New Seasons has to continually consider how the business is addressing B Corp. requirements.

“It’s really that intentional coming back to how does this affect all the stakeholders, and how are we thinking about, not just the near term of our business, but how it affects those stakeholders mid and long term?” says Petty. “It is literally a conversation that comes up weekly, if not daily, about ‘how does this affect B Corp?’”